Berkeley faculty win Nobel Prize
University of California faculty brought home the Nobel Prize in physics for the 15th time on Tuesday.
George F. Smoot, UC Berkeley professor and experimental astrophysicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and UC Berkeley alumnus John C. Mather of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, won the award for their research on the origin of the universe.
The two scientists conducted experiments in 1992 that strengthened the Big Bang Theory, which proposes that the universe was born during a single explosion of extremely hot, dense matter about 13 billion years ago.
Their research eliminated an alternative theory that the universe was in a steady state and would exist the same way forever, said Robert Sanders, a UC Berkeley spokesman.
“The discovery was sort of fabulous,” Smoot said. “It was an incredible milestone. Now this is a great honor and recognition. It’s amazing.”
According to the Big Bang Theory, the universe should be filled with cosmic microwave background radiation, the remnant heat left over from the Big Bang explosion.
“There had been a lot of attempts (to prove the Big Bang Theory) using experiments on balloons and rockets, but to really answer the question, they had to get something totally above the atmosphere – a satellite,” Sanders said. “They were the first ones to build a satellite that could look at the cosmic microwave background and answer those questions.”
Mather coordinated the satellite and had primary responsibility for the experiment that revealed the blackbody spectrum, a type of energy emission scientists had expected the Big Bang to produce.
Smoot’s experiments looked at the temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background radiation, Sanders said.
These tiny fluctuations in the temperature indicated the structure of the universe from 400,000 years after the Big Bang to the point at which it formed into galaxies and clusters of galaxies, he said.
The scientists’ findings changed the study of the early universe from intangible theories to a field of quantifiable observation and measurement.
“It’s just a really, really difficult experimental measurement to make. ... It’s the farthest out we can see in the universe and it’s the farthest back in time,” said Phillip F. Schewe, a spokesman for the American Institute of Physics.
Smoot has now turned his attention to other areas. He is attempting to bring concrete proof to the field of string theory, which currently lacks concrete experimental data.
String theory postulates that the fundamental constituent of all matter in the universe is not elementary particles such as electrons or quarks, but vibrating strings. Each vibration corresponds to a different type of elementary particle and determines its mass and charge. This theory currently lacks experimental evidence because of the infinitesimally small scale of the theoretical strings. Sanders said Smoot is now interested in finding proof for these theoretical strings by looking in the sky. Smoot and Mather will be awarded the prizes, which include a $1.4 million check, a gold medal and a diploma, on Dec. 10.
With reports from Bruin wire services.
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