Chercheurs

Astronomie / SMOOT, GEORGE F.

Position

Astrophysicist and a cosmologist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory since 1974 and a University of California at Berkeley physics professor since 1994.

Thèmes de recherche

George Smoot is an active researcher in observational astrophysics and cosmology. Smoot’s group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley is observing our Galaxy and the cosmic background radiation that is remnant from the fiery beginning of our Universe. Projects include ground-based radio-telescope observations, balloon-borne instrumentation and satellite experiments. The most famous of these is COBE (the NASA Cosmic Background Explorer satellite) which has shown that the cosmic background radiation intensity has a wavelength dependence precisely that of a perfectly absorbing body indicating that it is the relic radiation from the Big Bang origin of the Universe.

Using NASA’s COBE DMR, Smoot and his colleagues have made a map of the early Universe discovering the seeds of present day galaxies and clusters of galaxies. These seeds show up as variations at the part in 100,000 level in density from place to place. They also reveal information on the Big Bang and the origin of the Universe. In addition to continuing work on the four years of COBE data and on-going balloon experiments, Dr. Smoot has joined with colleagues in Europe to propose a new European Space Agency satellite to extend and improve these measurements.

Prix et récompenses

George F. Smoot has been awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize for physics, with John C. Mather of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, \"for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation.\"

Publications

G. F. Smoot, C. L Bennett, A. Kogut, et al., “Structure in the COBE DMR first year maps,” Ap. J. Lett. 396, L1 (1992).

G. Smoot, M. Gorenstein, and R. A. Muller, “Detection of anisotropy in the cosmic blackbody radiation,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 39, 898 (1977).

J. Mather, et al., “A preliminary measurement of the cosmic microwave background spectrum by the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite,” Ap. J. Lett. 354, L37 (1990).

A. T. Lee, P. Ade, A. Balbi, J. Bock, J. Borrill, A. Boscaleri, P. De Bernardis, P. G. Ferreira, S. Hanany, V. V. Hristov, A. H. Jaffe, P. D. Mauskopf, C. B. Netterfield, E. Pascale, B. Rabii, P. L. Richards, G. F. Smoot, R. Stompor, C. D. Winant, and J. H. P. Wu, “A high spatial resolution analysis of the MAXIMA-1 cosmic microwave background anisotropy data,” Ap. J. (accepted 2001), astro-ph/0104459.

I. F. M. Albuquerque and G. F. Smoot, “Measuring atmospheric neutrino oscillations with neutrino telescopes,” Phys. Rev. D64, 53008 (2001), hep-ph/0102078.

G. F. Smoot and D. Scott, “Review of cosmic background radiation,” Phys. Rev. D54, 118 (2001).

Angelica de Oliveira-Costa, George F. Smoot, and Alexei A. Starobinsky, “Can the lack of symmetry in the COBE/DMR maps constrain the topology of the universe?,” Ap. J. 468, 457 (1996), astro-ph/9510109.