This year's Nobel Prize of Physics went to two physicists whose contributions to astronomy have greatly deepened our understanding of the Universe. When an announcement is this big, you have to assume that Mad Physics will be there to give you all the details. Below, our party summary!
Nobel Laureate George Smoot was quick to embrace life as a scientific rock star!
Official press release from the Nobel Prize Website:
This year the Physics Prize is awarded for work that looks back into the infancy of the Universe and attempts to gain some understanding of the origin of galaxies and stars. It is based on measurements made with the help of the COBE satellite launched by NASA in 1989.The COBE results provided increased support for the Big Bang scenario for the origin of the Universe, as this is the only scenario that predicts the kind of cosmic microwave background radiation measured by COBE. These measurements also marked the inception of cosmology as a precise science. It was not long before it was followed up, for instance by the WMAP satellite, which yielded even clearer images of the background radiation. Very soon the European Planck satellite will be launched in order to study the radiation in even greater detail.
According to the Big Bang scenario, the cosmic microwave background radiation is a relic of the earliest phase of the Universe. Immediately after the big bang itself, the Universe can be compared to a glowing "body emitting radiation in which the distribution across different wavelengths depends solely on its temperature. The shape of the spectrum of this kind of radiation has a special form known as blackbody radiation. When it was emitted the temperature of the Universe was almost 3,000 degrees Centigrade. Since then, according to the Big Bang scenario, the radiation has gradually cooled as the Universe has expanded. The background radiation we can measure today corresponds to a temperature that is barely 2.7 degrees above absolute zero. The Laureates were able to calculate this temperature thanks to the blackbody spectrum revealed by the COBE measurements.
Now for more pictures from the reception:
George Smoot with UC Berkeley Chancellor (and physicist) Robert Birgeneau
more pictures of the two below...
Now if you think that such a great day had room for only one Nobel Laureate, you would be wrong. Here are some shots of Laureate Steven Chu:
Finally here are a couple pictures of University of California President (and physicist—do you see a trend here?) Robert Dynes:
It was quite the party! I can't wait until next year!
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