Religions > Atheism > Americans win Nobel for Big Bang study Academy says physicists’ work changed our view of universe’s infancy
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Religions > Atheism |
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"stoney" |
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03 Oct 2006 07:58:16 PM |
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Americans win Nobel for Big Bang study Academy says physicists’ work changed our view of universe’s infancy |
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/15113168/?GT1=8618
Americans win Nobel for Big Bang study
Academy says physicists’ work changed our view of universe’s infancy
MSNBC News Services
Updated: 1:57 p.m. ET Oct. 3, 2006
STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Americans John Mather and George Smoot won the 2006
Nobel Prize for physics on Tuesday for research into cosmic radiation
that helped pinpoint the age of the universe and supported the Big Bang
theory of its birth.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awarded the $1.37 million
prize, said the two men were instrumental to the success of the Cosmic
Background Explorer satellite program launched by NASA in 1989.
Their work with the COBE satellite took Big Bang theory, which contends
that the universe began billions of years ago as a tiny dot that
exploded into today’s huge system of stars and planets, out of the realm
of mathematical equations and into the world of precise science. When
their research was published in 1992, famed cosmologist Stephen Hawking
called it the “greatest discovery of the century, if not of all time.”
“The COBE results provided increased support for the Big Bang scenario
for the origin of the universe, as this is the only scenario that
predicts the kind of microwave background radiation measured by COBE,”
the Academy said.
The radiation they looked at, so-called blackbody radiation, allowed the
laureates to show the universe had cooled from its initial fiery state
of 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (3,000 degrees Celsius) to a chill just 5
degrees F (2.7 degrees C) above absolute zero, which is -460 degrees F
or -273 degrees C.
This supported the theory that the universe was expanding.
Their measurements also showed temperature variations in background
radiation in space, in the range of a hundred-thousandth of a degree. An
analysis of these "ripples" in space enabled astronomers to estimate how
old the universe was.
Since the COBE results came out, scientists have used additional data to
narrow down the age of the universe to about 13.7 billion years.
Phillip F. Schewe, a spokesman for the American Institute of Physics,
said he had expected the two to win the honor. “It’s just a really,
really difficult experimental measurement to make. It’s the farthest out
we can see in the universe, and it’s the farthest back in time,” he told
The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
Lawrence Krauss, a theoretical physicist at Case Western Reserve
University in Cleveland, said the discovery of ripples in the cosmic
background radiation “changed everything.”
“It produced a revolution in what we know about the universe — we know
it is expanding, we know it is flat ... and we can measure that to an
incredible accuracy,” Krauss told Reuters. “Cosmology now is a precision
science.”
He said the Nobel recognition reinforced his view that more funding
should be allocated for answering fundamental astronomical questions
rather than returning humans to the moon. “New experiments on the cosmic
microwave background, new experiments to probe dark energy, to look for
habitable planets — all these have been delayed and/or canceled because
we are sending people back to the moon,” Krauss said.
Thrilled reactions
Mather, 60, of NASA's Goddard Flight Center in Maryland, coordinated the
COBE program and was responsible for one of its key experiments.
Astrophysicist Smoot, 61, of the University of California at Berkeley,
was in charge of measuring small temperature variations in the
radiation.
Mather told a news conference over a telephone link he was ”thrilled and
amazed.”
“I can’t say I was completely surprised, because people have said we
should be awarded, but this is just such a rare and special honor,”
Mather said.
Smoot told Reuters the Nobel committee called him at 2:45 a.m. PT (5:45
a.m. ET) after first dialing the wrong number. In an interview with The
Associated Press, he explained that he had gotten so many phone calls
after the COBE discovery that he has had an unlisted number since then.
“The discovery was sort of fabulous. It was an incredible milestone. Now
this is a great honor and recognition. It’s amazing,” he said.
“It gives us a common viewpoint on how the world came into being and
what our place in it might be,” Smoot said of his work. “It is extremely
important for human beings to know their origins and their place in the
world.”
Working on the next steps
Smoot said the small variations in the microwave background in different
directions, detected by the COBE satellite, provided new clues about
galaxy and star formation and why matter had been concentrated in a
specific place rather than spreading out.
“Tiny variations in temperature could show where matter had started
aggregating. Once this process had started, gravitation would take care
of the rest: matter attracts matter, which leads to stars and galaxies
forming,” the Academy said.
Mather said he was already at work on the next steps in the search for
the universe’s origins as senior project scientist for the James Webb
Space Telescope, an infrared telescope that will be the largest in
space, able to push past the limits the Hubble Space Telescope can now
observe. The Webb telescope is slated for launch no earlier than 2013.
Since 1986, Americans have either won or shared the physics prize with
people from other countries 15 times. Last year, Americans John L. Hall
and Roy J. Glauber and German Theodor W. Haensch won the prize for work
that could improve long-distance communication and navigation.
This year’s award announcements began Monday with the Nobel Prize in
medicine going to Americans Andrew Z. Fire and Craig C. Mello for
discovering a powerful way to turn off the effect of specific genes,
offering new hope for fighting diseases as diverse as cancer and AIDS.
What's ahead
The winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry will be named Wednesday. The
Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel will
be announced Oct. 9.
The winner of the peace prize — the only one not awarded in Sweden —
will be announced Oct. 13 in Oslo, Norway.
A date for the literature prize has not yet been set.
Alfred Nobel, the wealthy Swedish industrialist and inventor of dynamite
who endowed the prizes, left only vague guidelines for the selection
committee. In his will, he said the prize should be given to those who
“shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind” and “shall have
made the most important discovery or invention within the field of
physics.”
The prizes, which include a $1.4 million check, a gold medal and a
diploma, are presented on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death in
1896.
This report includes information from Reuters and The Associated Press.
--
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