Mather and Smoot Win Nobel Prize in Physics

Posted on October 3, 2006

John C Mather and George F Smoot have won have won the 2006 Nobel Physics Prize, for "their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB)". The BBC has an article about Mather and Smoot's discovery.

The CMB is the "oldest light" in the Universe - it is all around us and comes from a time 380,000 years after the Big Bang.
Scientists say features in the CMB tell them about the evolution of the cosmos.
Mather, 60, is a senior astrophysicist at US space agency Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Smoot, 61, is a professor of physics at the University of California at Berkeley.
The pair worked on Nasa's Cobe satellite which was launched in 1989. It made the first precise measurements of the CMB.

Mather thanked people involved in the Cobe Cosmic Background Explorer project for the discovery. More information about the prize winners can be found here.

PHYSICS