GEORGE SMOOT will be relieved. From now on he鈥檒l be known as a Nobel laureate, rather than the man responsible for saying 鈥渋f you are a religious person it鈥檚 like seeing the face of God鈥�, when describing ripples in the radiation left over from the big bang.
On Tuesday, Smoot, of the University of California, Berkeley, and John Mather of NASA鈥檚 Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, were awarded the physics Nobel for their work on the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the afterglow of the big bang. The Nobel prize committee credited Mather with being 鈥渢he true driving force鈥� behind COBE, NASA鈥檚 Cosmic Background Explorer satellite. Mather was also in charge of the instrument that confirmed the elegant fit between the theoretical curve for 鈥渂lack body鈥� radiation at a temperature of 2.7 kelvin, and the CMB 鈥� thus proving that the universe is a near-perfect black body.
Smoot was responsible for the other significant experiment on COBE, which mapped the tiny temperature variations in the CMB in different directions. These are a result of fluctuations in the density of the early universe, which were amplified by gravity to give rise to stars and galaxies.
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