Big bang theory physicists share Nobel prize

Alok Jha

The Nobel prize for physics was awarded yesterday to two scientists who helped to prove that the universe began with the big bang. John Mather of the Nasa Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland and George Smoot of the University of California, Berkeley, will share the 10m kronor (£720,000) prize.

The big bang theory states that the universe was born in an explosion almost 14bn years ago. Today we see that explosion as a background of microwave radiation present throughout the universe.

Professor Smoot told Associated Press: “The discovery was sort of fabulous, it was an incredible milestone.” Professor Mather said the prize was a “rare and special honour”. The scientists were involved in designing and building the Cosmic Background Explorer (Cobe), a Nasa satellite launched in 1989 to measure microwave background radiation. Tiny variations in temperature told scientists how “clumpy” the universe is and how matter began to form stars and galaxies.

Profs Mather and Smoot published their results, which described the temperature variations, in the early 1990s. In the process they transformed cosmology from a mainly theoretical pursuit into an era of direct observation and measurement. Michael Rowan-Robinson, president of the Royal Astronomical Society, said that Mather and Smoot’s work was “among the most significant discoveries in astronomy of the past century”.