In 1932, a Bell Labs engineer trying to solve mysterious static from transatlantic phone calls that repeated every 23 hours and 56 minutes accidentally discovered radio waves from the center of the Milky Way

In the early 1930s, Bell Telephone Laboratories had a frustrating problem.

Static was interfering with its new transatlantic radio-telephone service, and the company wanted to know where the interference was coming from. The job fell to a young radio engineer named Karl Jansky, who had joined Bell Labs in 1928.