Gordon Bernstein Timeline and Summary

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• Gordon Bernstein and his graduate student Albert Cooper find an odd background noise in their experiment.
• After trying everything to weed it out, they decide it might not be a stray signal; they analyze it and discover a message hidden in the anomalous noise.
• Professor Lakin is suspicious of the noise at first but then decides to use it to strengthen a grant proposal. Gordon is unconvinced, believing they don't fully understand the transmission enough to be publishing papers about it.
• Gordon's mother visits and decides she does not want her son dating Penny—she wants him to date a nice Jewish girl instead.
• Seeking help to decipher the message, Gordon brings part of the messages to biologist Michael Ramsey and astronomer Saul Shriffer.
• Saul brings his part of the message on the evening news, hoping another scientist will help decode the transmission. He also lets slip that he believes the transmission comes from a distant civilization. Thanks, dude.
• Gordon's association with Saul wreaks havoc on his reputation and experiment, and Lakin and the other professors at La Jolla shun him.
• Gordon digs in and spends more time in the laboratory attempting to figure out the message; his workaholic ways strain his relationship with Penny.
• As his relationship problems increase, the puzzle pieces slowly come together.
• Gordon convinces Claudia Zinnes to set up her own experiment and she finds the transmission, too.
• Ramsey's experiments prove that the message warns about truly dangerous biochemical reactions.
• Eventually, Gordon has enough data to publish and prove his hypothesis, and when he does, the scientific crowd goes absolutely nuts for it.
• Later, a student looking up information on Gordon's experiments prevents Lee Harvey Oswald from assassinating President Kennedy. The past has been changed.
• Ten years later, Gordon receives the Enrico Fermi Award for his contributions to physics. His wife, Marsha, is there to support him. Gordon knows that the messages came from the future and that the world has been changed, but that means that future can no longer communicate with his timeline.