The 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for studies of some of the oldest stuff around. It meant looking back into the dawn of the Universe to gain some understanding of the origin of galaxies and stars. The award was shared by George Smoot of the University of California, Berkeley, and John Mather of NASA, “for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation”. Their work was based on measurements made by the COBE (Cosmic Bachground Explorer) satellite launched by NASA in 1989. Mather had primary responsibility for the blackbody form experiment, and Smoot was responsible for measuring temperature variations (“anisotropy”).
According to theory, cosmic microwave background radiation (discovered by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson in the 1960s) is fossil evidence of the Big Bang. The shape of the spectrum of this kind of radiation has a special form characteristic of blackbody radiation. When it was emitted the temperature of the Universe was almost 3,000 °C. Since then, the radiation has gradually cooled so that it is now barely 2.7 degrees above absolute zero. Mather was able to calculate this temperature thanks to the blackbody spectrum revealed by the COBE measurements. COBE also sought variations of temperature in different directions. Differences of the merest fraction of a degree offer an important clue to how the matter in the Universe began to form stars, planets and ultimately all life. The COBE results supports the standard cosmological scenario, a Big Bang followed by a rapid inflation, as this scenario predicts the kind of cosmic microwave background radiation measured by COBE. Newer satellites are being launched to improve even on these results.
George Fitzgerald Smoot III was born in Yukon, Florida, USA, in 1945. He attended Upper Arlington High School in Ohio, gained a dual BSc in mathematics and physics at MIT in 1966, and a doctorate in particle physics in 1970. He then switched to cosmology, collaborating with Luis Walter Alvarez at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on experiments for the detection of antimatter in the upper atmosphere. Turning his attention to cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), Smoot disproved the theory that the universe as a whole was rotating, which would have an effect on the CMB. It was to further pursue the study of CMB that Smoot proposed the Differential Microwave Radiometer (DMR) instrument for the COBE satellite to NASA.
After COBE, Smoot took part in another experiment involving a stratospheric balloon, MAXIMA. He is also a collaborator in designing the SNAP, a satellite which is proposed to measure the properties of dark energy. Smoot has been an astrophysicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) since 1974 and a UC Berkeley physics professor since 1994. In 2003 he was awarded the Einstein Medal.
This text and the picture of the Nobel Laureate were taken from the book: "NOBELS. Nobel Laureates photographed by Peter Badge" (WILEY-VCH, 2008).
Picture: © Peter Badge/ Foundation Lindau Nobelprizewinners Meetings at Lake Constance |
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BENEFACTORS:
(DE) Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung
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