I have just got my hands on a book called "Quantum Mechanics " written by B.H. Bransden & C.J. Joachain. It states that in 1964 a radio noise was discovered, and was interpreted as due to black body radiation at an absolute temperature of approximately 3 K, which fills the universe uniformly and hence is incident on the Earth with equal intensity from all directions. It seems to be very similar to Cosmic Background Radiation, but this was not discovered until 1965.

Will someone please explain the difference between these two discoveries ?

The two discoveries sound the same. According to the book who discovered the 3K background?

 

I suspect that 1964 was when the work was done, but it was not published until 1965 [1,2]. It can take a while to write a paper, get it referred, send a revised version, then it has to be printed etc.

 

 

References

 

[1] Penzias, A.A.; R. W. Wilson (July 1965). "A Measurement Of Excess Antenna Temperature At 4080 Mc/s". Astrophysical Journal Letters 142: 419–421

 

[2] Penzias, A.A.; R. W. Wilson (October 1965). "A Measurement of the Flux Density of CAS A At 4080 Mc/s". Astrophysical Journal Letters 142: 1149–1154

I have just got my hands on a book called "Quantum Mechanics " written by B.H. Bransden & C.J. Joachain. It states that in 1964 a radio noise was discovered, and was interpreted as due to black body radiation at an absolute temperature of approximately 3 K, which fills the universe uniformly and hence is incident on the Earth with equal intensity from all directions. It seems to be very similar to Cosmic Background Radiation, but this was not discovered until 1965.

Will someone please explain the difference between these two discoveries ?

 

The Earth is actually moving wrt it, so it is not equal from every direction.