Background Noise

Nice, subtle rhymes and loose rhythms give this a very accessible feel, which softens the technical nature of the subject (just as the reference to pillows does in the first stanza). 

It's interesting that the more credence we give to myths and bizarre theories (hello Professor Einstein), the more remarkable answers we find.  Without that amazing human capacity to imagine, the science would have nothing to prove.  (Although sometimes the imagination is rather ill-placed, like the people who committed suicide the day the Large Hadron Collider went online in case the universe ended and everyone died. Clearly not science people )

What a wonderful situation Penzias and Wilson found themselves in -- and yet, their discovery itself is not much more than (or even as much as) background noise to the billions of people going about their daily lives in complete ignorance.  Every minute of every day we encounter the echoes of great achievements and advances, and most of them are filtered out.  As poets (and obviously, in other -- real -- professions) we collect echoes and try to make them heard.  At the end of the day, maybe we're not much more than antennae.  I'm strangely ok with that.