Nobel Prize For Americans In Physics

Americans John C. Mather and George F. Smoot won the 2006 Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for work that helped cement the big-bang theory of how the universe was created and deepen understanding of the origin of galaxies and stars.

The scientists shared the prestigious 10 million kronor ($1.4 million) award for discovering the nature of "blackbody radiation" — cosmic background radiation believed to stem from the Big Bang — the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm said.

"It says the Big Bang was the right story, and it tells us how to understand the formation of galaxies and stars and eventually the conditions that would lead to our own existence here on earth," Mather told .

"My part of the prize is for leading a team of researchers who made a map of what I would call the 'embryo universe' and show that it was very uniform, but there were small variations that lead to interesting things, like galaxies," Smoot told .

Mather, 60, and Smoot, 61, based their work on measurements done with the help of the NASA-launched COsmic Background Explorer satellite in 1989.

They were able to observe the universe in its early stages about 380,000 years after it was born.

"What we saw was a universe that was very uniform, but it had tiny ripples in it, and these ripples are the seeds that grow to be the galaxies and the stars and the planetary systems that we see today," Smoot said.

"They have not proven the Big Bang theory but they give it very strong support," said Per Carlson, chairman of the Nobel committee for physics.

"It is one of the greatest discoveries of the century. I would call it the greatest. It increases our knowledge of our place in the universe."

Mather, works at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and Smoot works at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California.

"It's a great honor, and it's kind of exciting, even if I did get a call at 3 o'clock in the morning," Smoot said.

Mather got a little more sleep on the East Coast, but still was awakened with the news.

"I was thinking, 'this is a wonderful thing to have, and I'm thrilled that we're recognized, and I'd better wake up,'" he said.

Mather said he and Smoot did not realize how important their work was at the time of their discovery.

By confirming the predictions of the big-bang theory, which states that the universe was born of a dense and incredibly hot state billions of years ago, with direct quantitative evidence, the scientists transformed the study of the early universe from a largely theoretical pursuit into a new era of direct observation and measurement.

"This basically sets up the story of the history of the universe," Mather said.

The COBE project gave strong support for the big-bang theory because it is the only scenario that predicts the kind of cosmic microwave radiation measured by the satellite.

The academy called Mather the driving force behind the COBE project while Smoot was responsible for measuring small variations in the temperature of the radiation.

"The very detailed observations that the laureates have carried out from the COBE satellite have played a major role in the development of modern cosmology into a precise science," the academy said in its citation.

Since 1986, Americans have either won or shared the physics prize with people from other countries 15 times. Monday's medicine prize also went to two Americans.

Last year, Americans John L. Hall and Roy J. Glauber and German Theodor W. Haensch won the prize for work that could lead to better long-distance communication and more precise navigation worldwide and in space.

Alfred Nobel, the wealthy Swedish industrialist and inventor of dynamite who endowed the prizes, left only vague guidelines for the selection committee.

In his will, he said the prize should be given to those who "shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind" and "shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics."

This year's award announcements began Monday with the Nobel Prize in medicine going to Americans Andrew Z. Fire and Craig C. Mello for discovering a powerful way to turn off the effect of specific genes, opening a potential new avenue for fighting diseases as diverse as cancer and AIDS.

The winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry will be named Wednesday. The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel will be announced Oct. 9.

The winner of the peace prize — the only one not awarded in Sweden — will be announced Oct. 13 in Oslo, Norway.

A date for the literature prize has not yet been set.

The prizes, which include the cash prize, a gold medal and a diploma, are presented Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896.

What's Smoot going to do with his share of the money? "I haven't thought that far ahead right now. I'm more worried about how I'm going to get my class taught, and the award is during final exams."