What do popcorn, wi-fi and the Big Bang have in common? The answer is microwaves. The 1909 physics laureate Guglielmo Marconi made a revolutionary telephone that used microwaves. The technology kept evolving during World War II. Some decades later, two other physics laureates made another microwave-related discovery. Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson – awarded the prize in 1978 – found the cosmic microwave background, an echo of the Big Bang that still fills the universe. In other words, microwaves