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Another point for Big Bang
By Daniel Frykholm
Oct. 3 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. researchers John Mather and George Smoot won the Nobel Prize in physics for research into cosmic microwave background radiation that helped explain the origins of galaxies and stars.
Mather, 60, and Smoot, 61, used measurements from the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite launched by NASA in 1989 for results that support the Big Bang scenario for the origin of the universe, the Stockholm-based Nobel Foundation said in a statement on its Web site today.
Mather, who is senior astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and Smoot, a professor of physics at the University of California, will share the award of 10 million kronor ($1.37 million).
Annual awards for achievements in the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine, peace and literature were established in the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, who died in 1896. The Nobel Foundation, whose investments were valued at 3.57 billion kronor on Dec. 31, was founded in 1900 and the prizes were first handed out the following year.
The economics prize was created in 1969 in memory of Nobel by the Swedish central bank. Only the peace prize is awarded outside Sweden, by the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo.
Last year's physics prize went to Roy J. Glauber, John L. Hall and Theodor W. Haensch for research into using optics for making devices and measurements more precise. The first laureate in physics was Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen in 1901 for discovering the rays named after him. Albert Einstein was awarded the prize for discovering the law of the photoelectric effect.
Yesterday, the Nobel Prize for medicine was awarded to U.S. scientists Andrew Fire and Craig Mello, for discovering a mechanism that controls the flow of genetic information in plants, animals and humans. The discovery lets researchers silence genes, or turn them off, giving a clue to their function and possibly providing a route for treating gene-based diseases.