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George Smoot

 
Scientist: George Fitzgerald III Smoot
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American astrophysicist (1945)

Born at Yukon in Florida, Smoot was educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he took his PhD in physics in 1970. He moved to the University of California, Berkeley, in 1971 as a research physicist and in 1974 was appointed team leader for the differential microwave radiometers on board the Cosmic Background Explorer Satellite (COBE).

In 1965 Penzias and Wilson had discovered the cosmic background radiation. Initially it appeared to be perfectly isotropic, exactly the same whatever part of the universe it came from. Theorists found it difficult to account for such uniformity, and experimentalists began to wonder if it really was as uniform as it appeared.

The first disproof of isotropy came in 1977 from observations taken on board a high-flying U2 plane. The dipole anisotropy, as it was called, was small and was connected with the position of the Milky Way. Clearly further work was called for. After a number of delays, COBE was launched in 1989. Three instruments were carried. The differential microwave radiometer would measure differences in radiation from two points in the sky and could pick out differences between them of 1 part in 100,000. Also, a photometer measured the absolute brightness of the sky and searched for diffuse infrared radiation from the early universe. Finally, an interferometer measured the spectrum of the background radiation from 1 centimeter to 100 micrometers.

As the results emerged Smoot saw within the assumed uniformity ‘islands of structure’. A year was spent checking the reliability of the data – prizes were offered to anyone on the team who could identify a significant flaw. Finally the material was checked against a list of all the systematic errors ever noted during the years of preparation. After four papers describing the initial results had been revised more than a hundred times, Smoot was ready to go public.

The results seemed to show that there were bright spots in the universe, 30 millionths of a degree warmer than the average temperature. This was precisely the result predicted by the inflationary model of Alan Guth. It might also be possible, Smoot considered, to find in the ripples in the radiation the galactic clusters that populate the universe. Smoot has published a valuable popular account of the COBE mission in his Wrinkles in Time (1993).

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George Smoot

George Smoot at POVO conference in The Netherlands
Born February 20, 1945 (1945-02-20) (age 64)
Yukon, Florida, U.S.
Residence United States
Nationality United States
Fields Physics
Institutions Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Alma mater Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Doctoral advisor David H. Frisch[1]
Known for Cosmic microwave background radiation
Notable awards Albert Einstein Medal (2003)
Nobel Prize in Physics (2006)
Oersted Medal (2009)

George Fitzgerald Smoot III (born February 20, 1945) is an American astrophysicist, cosmologist and Nobel Prize in Physics laureate, and a $1 million TV quiz show prize winner. He won the Nobel Prize in 2006 for his work on COBE with John C. Mather that led to the measurement "...of the black body form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation."

This work helped further the big-bang theory of the universe using the Cosmic Background Explorer Satellite (COBE). According to the Nobel Prize committee, "the COBE-project can also be regarded as the starting point for cosmology as a precision science."[2] Smoot donated his share of the Nobel Prize money, less travel costs, to a charitable foundation. [3]

He is a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2003 he was awarded the Einstein Medal.

Contents

Biography

Education

Smoot was born in Yukon (Jacksonville), Florida. He graduated from Upper Arlington High School in Upper Arlington, Ohio, in 1962. He studied mathematics before switching to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he obtained dual bachelor's degrees in mathematics and physics in 1966, and a Ph.D. in particle physics in 1970.[4]

Although Smoot attended MIT, he was not the same Smoot who was laid end to end to measure the Harvard Bridge between Cambridge and Boston;[5][6] this was his cousin Oliver R. Smoot, an MIT alumnus who served as the chairman of the American National Standards Institute.[6][7]

Initial research

George Smoot then switched to cosmology, and went to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory where he collaborated with Luis Walter Alvarez on the experiment HAPPE (High Altitude Particle Physics Experiment), a stratospheric balloon for the detection of antimatter in the upper atmosphere, which was predicted by the now obscure steady state theory of cosmology.

He then took up an interest in cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), previously discovered by Arno Allan Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson in 1964. There were, at that time, several open questions about this, relating directly to fundamental questions about the structure of the universe. Certain models predicted the universe as a whole was rotating, which would have an effect on the CMB: its temperature depending on the direction of observation. With the help of Alvarez and Richard A. Muller, Smoot developed a differential radiometer which measured the difference in temperature of the CMB between two directions 60 degrees apart. The instrument, which was mounted on a Lockheed U-2 plane, made it possible to determine that the overall rotation of the universe was zero, which was within the limits of accuracy of the instrument. It did, however, detect a variation in the temperature of the CMB of a different sort. That the CMB appears to be at a higher temperature on one side of the sky than on the opposite side, referred to as a dipole pattern, has been explained as a Doppler effect of the Earth's motion relative to the area of CMB emission, which is called the last scattering surface. Such a doppler effect arises because the Sun, and in fact the Milky Way as a whole, is not stationary, but rather is moving at nearly 600 km/s with respect to the last scattering surface. This is probably due to the gravitational attraction between our galaxy and a concentration of mass like the Great Attractor.

COBE

Map of the CMB fluctuations found by COBE.

At that time, the CMB appeared to be perfectly uniform excluding the distortion caused by the Doppler effect as mentioned above. This result contradicted observations of the universe, with various structures such as galaxies, galaxy clusters, that indicate that the universe was relatively heterogeneous on a small scale. However, these structures formed slowly. Thus, if the universe is heterogeneous today, it would be heterogeneous at the time of the emission of the CMB as well, observable today through weak variations in the temperature of the CMB. It was the detection of these anisotropies that Smoot was working on in the late 1970s. He then proposed to NASA a project involving a satellite equipped with a detector that was similar to the one mounted on the U-2, but was more sensitive and not influenced by air pollution. The proposal was accepted and gave rise to the satellite COBE, and cost US$160 million. COBE was launched on November 18, 1989, after a delay owing to the destruction of the Space Shuttle Challenger. After more than two years of observation and analysis, the COBE research team announced on 23 April 1992 that the satellite had detected tiny fluctuations in the CMB, a breakthrough in the study of the early universe.[8] The observations were "evidence for the birth of the universe" and Smoot said on the importance of his discovery that "If you're religious, it's like looking at God."[9][10]

Smoot celebrating his Nobel Prize at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 3 October 2006

The success of COBE was the outcome of prodigious team work involving more than 1,000 researchers, engineers and other participants. John Mather coordinated the entire process and also had primary responsibility for the experiment that revealed the blackbody form of the CMB measured by COBE. George Smoot had main responsibility for measuring the small variations in the temperature of the radiation.[11]

Smoot collaborated with San Francisco Chronicle journalist Keay Davidson to write the general-audience book Wrinkles in Time, that chronicled his team's efforts.[12] In the book The Very First Light, John Mather and John Boslough complement and broaden the COBE story,[13] and suggest that George Smoot violated team policy by leaking news of COBE's discoveries to the press before NASA's formal announcement, a leak that, to Mather, smacked of self-promotion and betrayal, but Smoot eventually apologized for not following the agreed publicity plan, and Mather said tensions eventually eased. Mather acknowledged that "George had brought COBE worldwide publicity" the project might not normally have received.[14][15]

Recent projects

After COBE, Smoot took part in another experiment involving a stratospheric balloon, MAXIMA, which had improved angular resolution compared to COBE, and refined the measurements of the anisotropies of the CMB. Smoot has continued CMB observations and analysis and is currently a collaborator on the third generation CMB anisotropy satellite Planck. He is also a collaborator in the design of the Supernova/Acceleration Probe (SNAP), a satellite which is proposed to measure the properties of dark energy.[16] He has also assisted in analyzing data from the Spitzer Space Telescope in connection with measuring far infrared background radiation.[17]

Public appearances

Smoot had a cameo appearance as himself in The Terminator Decoupling, episode 17 of the second season of The Big Bang Theory. He contacted the show, as a fan of their often physics-based plots, and was incorporated into an episode lecturing in a fictional physics symposium.[18]

On September 18, 2009, Smoot appeared as the finale contestant on the Fox television show Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? 's last episode. He reached the final question, where he correctly answered Maine as the location of Acadia National Park, becoming the second person (and first male) to win the one million dollar prize.[19]

References

  1. ^ Katherine Bourzac (12 January 2007). "Nobel Causes". Technology Review. http://www.technologyreview.com/article/17926/. Retrieved 2007-09-05. "And Smoot himself can still vividly recall playing a practical joke on his graduate thesis advisor, MIT physics professor David Frisch." 
  2. ^ The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (3 October 2006). "The Nobel Prize in Physics 2006" (.PDF). Press release. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2006/info.html. Retrieved 2006-10-05. 
  3. ^ "Berkeley Nobel laureates donate prize money to charity". Associated Press (via San Francisco Chronicle). 22 March 2007. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2007/03/22/state/n140056D96.DTL&type=printable. 
  4. ^ MIT Press Office (3 October 2006). "Nobelists' work supports big-bang theory". Press release. http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/smoot.html. Retrieved 2006-10-03. 
  5. ^ George Smoot. "The SMOOT as unit of Length". http://aether.lbl.gov/www/personnel/smoot/smoot-measure.html. Retrieved 2006-10-07. 
  6. ^ a b Talk of the Nation (6 October 2006). "Winning the Nobel Prize". National Public Radio. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6210148. Retrieved 2006-10-07. 
  7. ^ All Things Considered (7 December 2005). "Smoot, Namesake of a Unit of Length, Retires". National Public Radio. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5043041. Retrieved 2006-10-07. 
  8. ^ Smoot, G.F.; et al. (September 1992). "Structure in the COBE differential microwave radiometer first-year maps". Astrophysical Journal 396 (1): L1–L5. doi:10.1086/186504. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=1992ApJ...396L...1S&db_key=AST&data_type=HTML&format=&high=4381f4775710298. Retrieved 2007-09-05. 
  9. ^ Associated Press (April 24, 1992). "U.S. Scientists Find a 'Holy Grail': Ripples at Edge of the Universe". International Herald Tribune: pp. 1. 
  10. ^ Thomas H. Maugh, II (April 24, 1992). "Relics of Big Bang, Seen for First Time". Los Angeles Times: pp. A1, A30. 
  11. ^ Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (3 October 2006). "Pictures of a Newborn Universe". Press release. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2006/press.html. Retrieved 2007-09-05. 
  12. ^ Smoot, George; Davidson, Keay (1993). Wrinkles in Time. New York: W. Morrow. ISBN 0688123309. 
  13. ^ Mather, John; Boslough, John (1997). The Very First Light: The True Inside Story of the Scientific Journey Back to the Dawn of the Universe. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0465015751. 
  14. ^ http://www.ebdailynews.com/article/2006-10-4-eb-nobel
  15. ^ Lynn Yarris (26 October 2006). "After the Phone Call". Science@Berkeley Lab. http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/sabl/2006/Oct/4.html. Retrieved 2007-09-05. 
  16. ^ "Supernova/Acceleration Probe (SNAP)". Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. http://snap.lbl.gov. Retrieved 2007-09-05. 
  17. ^ "Spitzer Cosmic Far-IR Background Project". Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. http://www-astro.lbl.gov/~bruce/spitzerlblpage. Retrieved 2007-09-05. 
  18. ^ "The Big Bang Theory Videos". CBS. http://www.cbs.com/primetime/big_bang_theory/video/video.php?cid=501654023&pid=pwOdeZWHonEGK0CAq3PTV8WOU5jxwe40&play=true&cc=2. Retrieved 2009-03-07. 
  19. ^ "Are You Smarter Than 5th Grader? Season 3 Ep. 27". FOX, Mark Burnett Productions. http://www.hulu.com/watch/96145/are-you-smarter-than-a-5th-grader-episode-27. Retrieved 2009-09-26. 

Publications

External links

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Nobel Laureates in Physics

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