John Mather, a senior astrophysicist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and senior project scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), shares the 2006 Nobel Physics Prize with George F. Smoot of the University of California for their collaborative work on understanding the Big Bang.

As members of a science team that used NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite to measure the diffuse microwave background radiation from the first few instants after the universe was formed, the COBE team announced that they had mapped the primordial hot and cold spots in the cosmic microwave background radiation. In addition, they showed that the big bang radiation has a spectrum that agrees exactly with the theoretical prediction. This is further evidence to support the Big Bang theory and show that the Big Bang was complete in the first instants, with only a tiny fraction of the energy released later.

About Physics Guide, Andrew Zimmerman Jones, also discusses this Nobel Prize win by Dr. Mather. Check out his Blog for more.

Image Credit: NASA and Goddard Space Flight Center