Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded to 2 American Cosmologists for Findings on Universe's Infancy

By RICHARD MONASTERSKY

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Two American cosmologists won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics this morning for discoveries related to the infancy of the universe, when it was a roiling mass of rapidly expanding hot gas.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences will split the award of 10 million Swedish kronor, or about $1.4-million, between John C. Mather, 60, a senior astrophysicist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Goddard Space Flight Center, in Greenbelt, Md.; and George F. Smoot, 61, a professor of physics at the University of California at Berkeley. They will receive the prize at a ceremony in December.

The two scientists were leaders of a satellite mission designed to measure the faint glow in the sky left over from the Big Bang, the titanic explosion with which the universe is thought to have begun some 14 billion years ago. The radiation has cooled and stretched over time as the universe has expanded, and it now can be seen only in the form of microwaves coming from all directions in the sky. Researchers call it the cosmic microwave background radiation.

Because Earth's atmosphere absorbs those waves, NASA in 1989 launched the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite, better known as COBE. Mr. Mather was the principal investigator and led the project. He also was in charge of one of three instruments on the satellite. Mr. Smoot oversaw another instrument, which made critical measurements of temperature variations in the microwave radiation.

When the COBE results were announced, physicists and astronomers immediately hailed them as one of the more important results in astronomy. In 1992 Michael Turner, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago, told The Chronicle that "the Holy Grail has been found."

Many cosmologists regard the COBE results as a turning point for their field, when it truly became a precise science. Before that, few experiments had yielded such detailed data, and theoretical work dominated the field. In the 14 years since the COBE results were announced, researchers have discovered that most of the energy in the universe is in the form of a mysterious dark energy -- a kind of repulsive gravity that is making the universe expand at an accelerating rate.

Mr. Mather and Mr. Smoot, along with their colleagues, started that avenue of exploration by very precisely measuring the microwave radiation coming from different directions in the sky. Although the microwave background is generally about 2.7 degrees above absolute zero, there are patches where the temperature varies up or down by one-ten-thousandth of a degree. Those relatively hot and cool spots show how matter in the early universe was clumping together, just 380,000 years after the Big Bang. Those clumps eventually grew into the large structures of the universe, giving rise to the galaxies we see today.

More information about the prize winners is available on the Nobel Web site.

• NASA Probe Helps Fill in Details of Big Bang Theory (3/17/2006)

• Images of Light Provide Clues to the Universe (5/18/2001)

• Science Confronts the Ultimate Question (5/12/1993)

• 'Discovery of the Century' Brings Instant Celebrity (7/1/1992)

• Scientists Look For the 'Seeds' of the Galaxies (4/29/1992)

• New Discoveries of Large Structures in Cosmos Challenge Leading Ideas on Universe's Origin (1/30/1991)

• Astronomers' Findings Challenge Cosmic-Evolution Theory (1/3/1990)

Other news of the 2006 Nobel Prizes:

• Nobel Prize Goes to 2 Americans for Discovery of Key Control of Cell's Genetic Workings (10/2/2006)