Date/Time: 16th October 2008, 17:30

Venue: Curtis Auditorium, Herschel Building

To hear a recording of this lecture 

 

 Title: “From the Big Bang to the Nobel Prize and on to James Webb Space Telescope”

The history of the universe in a nutshell, from the Big Bang to now, and on to the future – John Mather will tell the story of how we got here, how the Universe began with a Big Bang, how it could have produced an Earth where sentient beings can live, and how those beings are discovering their history.  Mather was Project Scientist for NASA’s Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite, which measured the spectrum (the colour) of the heat radiation from the Big Bang, discovered hot and cold spots in that radiation, and hunted for the first objects that formed after the great explosion.  He will explain Einstein’s biggest mistake, show how Edwin Hubble discovered the expansion of the universe, how the COBE mission was built, and how the COBE data support the Big Bang theory.  He will also show NASA’s plans for the next great telescope in space, the James Webb Space Telescope.  It will look even farther back in time than the Hubble Space Telescope, and will look inside the dusty cocoons where stars and planets are being born today. Planned for launch in 2013, it may lead to another Nobel Prize for some lucky observer. 

Dr. John C. Mather is a Senior Astrophysicist in the Observational Cosmology Laboratory at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.  His research centers on infrared astronomy and cosmology.  As an NRC postdoctoral fellow at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (New York City), he led the proposal efforts for the Cosmic Background Explorer (74-76), and came to GSFC to be the Study Scientist (76-88), Project Scientist (88-98), and the Principal Investigator for the Far IR Absolute Spectrophotometer (FIRAS) on COBE.  He showed that the cosmic microwave background radiation has a blackbody spectrum within 50 parts per million, confirming the Big Bang theory to extraordinary accuracy.  As Senior Project Scientist (95-present) for the James Webb Space Telescope, he leads the science team, and represents scientific interests within the project management. Dr. Mather is also Chief Scientist of the Science Mission Directorate (SMD) at NASA Headquarters, where he provides independent scientific advice on all aspects of the NASA science program. He is the recipient of many awards, including the Nobel Prize in Physics (2006) with George Smoot, for the COBE work.