George Smoot
George Smoot
George Fitzgerald Smoot IIIis an American astrophysicist, cosmologist, Nobel laureate, and one of two contestants to win the US$1 million prize on Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2006 for his work on the Cosmic Background Explorer with John C. Mather that led to the "discovery of the black body form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth20 February 1945
CityYukon, FL
CountryUnited States of America
But every day I go to work I'm making a bet that the universe is simple, symmetric, and aesthetically pleasing—a universe that we humans, with our limited perspective, will someday understand.
The big bang, the most cataclysmic event we can imagine, on closer inspection appears finely orchestrated.
There is no doubt that a parallel exists between the big bang as an event and the Christian notion of creation from nothing.
With something like Chernobyl, the public reaction was Oh, my God, science has really done wrong.
When people really understand the Big Bang and the whole sweep of the evolution of the universe, it will be clear that humans are fairly insignificant.
For many centuries, humans have speculated that there might be planetary systems around other stars and that there could be extraterrestrial life there and even intelligent being. However, those were simply speculations, and now we have evidence for the first part of these ideas.
I always think of space-time as being the real substance of space, and the galaxies and the stars just like the foam on the ocean.
The discovery and investigation of life on other planets is likely to change many of our ideas about how life arose on the Earth and even what is life and its natural development.
With something like Chernobyl, the public reaction was 'Oh, my God, science has really done wrong.'
People have contemplated the origin and evolution of the universe since before the time of Aristotle. Very recently, the era of speculation has given way to a time of science.
Both my parents instilled an interest in science and mathematics.
I played football and ran track in junior high, but by high school I was getting serious about my studies.
My name is George Smoot III, and I am smarter than a fifth-grader.