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http:// --> Ashland, Oregon HOME Valley & State Sports Nation & World Opinion/Editorial Classifieds Business Columnists Obituaries Weather Archive Hot Topics Forum Photo Gallery Past Readers Polls Revels Etcetera Backpage O-Zone Special Sections Real Estate Guide Menu Guide Shakespeare Subscribe Contact Us Rate Card Place an Ad Online Games Movie Preview October 3, 2006 Two Americans win Nobel in Physics By Marc Kaufman The Washington Post WASHINGTON — Americans John C. Mather and George F. Smoot won the 2006 Nobel Prize in physics today for work they did in developing a NASA satellite that produced dramatic evidence supporting the big-bang theory of the origins of the universe. The Nobel committee said that their findings turned cosmology from a theoretical science into one where precise measurements and conclusions are possible. Mather, 60, a senior astrophysicist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, and Smoot, 61, an experimental astrophysicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., played key roles in developing the ground-breaking Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) experiment in the late 1980s. The NASA satellite they helped design sent back measurements that confirmed an essential aspect of the big-bang scenario — that the cosmic microwave background radiation is a relic of the earliest phase of the universe. "They have not proven the big-bang theory, but they give it very strong support," said Per Carlson, chairman of the Nobel committee for physics, the Associated Press reported. "It is one of the greatest discoveries of the century; I would call it the greatest," he said. "It increases our knowledge of our place in the universe." Mather is the first NASA civil servant scientist to be awarded the Nobel Prize, but he is hardly the first federal employee to win a Nobel. About one-quarter of the 270 Americans who have won Nobels worked for the federal government. Since 1986, Americans have either won or shared the physics prize with people from other nations 15 times. The COBE satellite experiments resulted in the first detection of faint temperature variations in the cosmic microwave background, the bath of radiation representing the first light able to move freely through the universe after the big bang. Those tiny differences in temperature are essential help explain how galaxies formed. If the energy and radiation emanating from the big bang had been uniform, scientists had theorized, the universe would not have materialized as it did. Phillip 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," he said. "It's the farthest out we can see in the universe and it's the farthest back in time." The COBE results were first presented at an Americans Astronomical Society meeting in 1993, triggering an audible gasp and a later ovation from the assembled scientists. The work was considered a great feat of experimental science since the faint temperature variations had to be distinguished from a bath of microwave radiation coming from our own solar system, our galaxy and other celestial objects. In addition, the Earth's motion around the sun, and the sun's movement around the Milky Way all had to be taken into account. The discovery involved a special kind of energy called "blackbody radiation." In its release, the Nobel committee said that immediately after the big bang, the universe could be compared to a glowing body emitting radiation in which the wavelengths depended solely on its temperature. That form of blackbody radiation was almost 3,000 degrees Centigrade when it was first released. Scientists had long theorized that the radiation had to gradually cool as the universe expanded, but it wasn't until the work of Mather and Smoot that the actual temperature of the background radiation was measured. Leave a Comment: Advertisement: Advertisement: Paid Advertising Inkjet Printers Student Loans Water Filter Helzberg Diamonds Mortgage Calculator Security Systems Advertisement: Copyright © 2006 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers. All Rights Reserved.