Faced with a persistent hiss no one could explain, two scientists checked the wiring, ruled out New York City, and scrubbed pigeon droppings from a giant antenna. The static turned out to be the cooled afterglow of creation itself.

This episode profiles Robert Woodrow Wilson, whose meticulous refusal to ignore data that didn't fit led to one of the greatest discoveries of the 20th century, and shows how messy, accidental, and rigorous real science actually is.

• The cascading disasters at Caltech, faulty equipment and a departing advisor, that taught him to never blindly trust a machine
• How Bell Labs' satellite-communication horn antenna in Holmdel became an instrument for radio astronomy
• The high-stakes troubleshooting that documented pigeon guano as 'white dielectric material'
• The cosmic microwave backgrou ...