George Fitzgerald Smoot III (born February 20, 1945) is an American astrophysicist, cosmologist, Nobel laureate, and the second contestant to win the $1 million prize on '' Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?.'' He won the

Nobel Prize in Physics The Nobel Prize in Physics () is an annual award given by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for those who have made the most outstanding contributions to mankind in the field of physics. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the ...

in 2006 for his work on the

Cosmic Background Explorer The Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE ), also referred to as Explorer 66, was a NASA satellite dedicated to cosmology, which operated from 1989 to 1993. Its goals were to investigate the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB or CMBR) of th ...

with John C. Mather that led to the "discovery of the

black body A black body or blackbody is an idealized physical body that absorbs all incident electromagnetic radiation, regardless of frequency or angle of incidence. The radiation emitted by a black body in thermal equilibrium with its environment is ...

form and

anisotropy Anisotropy () is the structural property of non-uniformity in different directions, as opposed to isotropy. An anisotropic object or pattern has properties that differ according to direction of measurement. For example, many materials exhibit ve ...

of the

cosmic microwave background radiation The cosmic microwave background (CMB, CMBR), or relic radiation, is microwave radiation that fills all space in the observable universe. With a standard optical telescope, the background space between stars and galaxies is almost completely dar ...

". This work helped further the

Big Bang The Big Bang is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. Various cosmological models based on the Big Bang concept explain a broad range of phenomena, including th ...

theory of the universe using the

(COBE) satellite. According to the Nobel Prize committee, "the COBE project can also be regarded as the starting point for

cosmology Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe, the cosmos. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', with the meaning of "a speaking of the wo ...

as a precision science." Smoot donated his share of the Nobel Prize money, less travel costs, to a charitable foundation. Smoot has been at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

and the

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL, Berkeley Lab) is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center in the Berkeley Hills, hills of Berkeley, California, United States. Established i ...

since 1970. He is Chair of the Endowment Fund "Physics of the Universe" of Paris Center for Cosmological Physics. Apart from being elected a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Physical Society, Smoot has been honored by several universities worldwide with doctorates or professorships. He was also the recipient of the Gruber Prize in Cosmology (2006), the Daniel Chalonge Medal from the International School of Astrophysics (2006), the Einstein Medal from the Albert Einstein Society (2003), the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award from the US Department of Energy (1995), and the Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal from NASA (1991). He is a member of the advisory board of the journal ''Universe''. Smoot is one of the 20 American recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics to sign a letter addressed to President

George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician and businessman who was the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Bush family and the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he i ...

in May 2008, urging him to "reverse the damage done to basic science research in the Fiscal Year 2008 Omnibus Appropriations Bill" by requesting additional emergency funding for the Department of Energy's Office of Science, the

National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...

, and the

National Institute of Standards and Technology The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into Outline of p ...

Early life

Smoot was born in Yukon, Florida. His maternal grandfather was Johnson Tal Crawford. He graduated from Upper Arlington High School in Upper Arlington, Ohio, in 1962. He studied

mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

before switching to

physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...

at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

, where he obtained dual

bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Medieval Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six years ...

s in mathematics and physics in 1966 and a Ph.D. in

particle physics Particle physics or high-energy physics is the study of Elementary particle, fundamental particles and fundamental interaction, forces that constitute matter and radiation. The field also studies combinations of elementary particles up to the s ...

in 1970. A distant relative, Oliver R. Smoot, was the MIT student who was used as the unit of measure known as the smoot.

Initial research

George Smoot switched to cosmology and began work at Berkeley, collaborating with

Luis Walter Alvarez Luis Walter Alvarez (June 13, 1911 – September 1, 1988) was an American experimental physicist, inventor, and professor who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1968 for his discovery of resonance (particle physics), resonance states in ...

on the High Altitude Particle Physics Experiment, a stratospheric

weather balloon A weather balloon, also known as a sounding balloon, is a balloon (specifically a type of high-altitude balloon) that carries instruments to the stratosphere to send back information on atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity and wind spe ...

designed to detect

antimatter In modern physics, antimatter is defined as matter composed of the antiparticles (or "partners") of the corresponding subatomic particle, particles in "ordinary" matter, and can be thought of as matter with reversed charge and parity, or go ...

in Earth's upper atmosphere, the presence of which was predicted by the now discredited steady state theory of cosmology. He then took up an interest in

(CMB), previously discovered by Arno Allan Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson in 1964. There were, at that time, several open questions about this topic, relating directly to fundamental questions about the structure of the

universe The universe is all of space and time and their contents. It comprises all of existence, any fundamental interaction, physical process and physical constant, and therefore all forms of matter and energy, and the structures they form, from s ...

. Certain models predicted the universe as a whole was rotating, which would have an effect on the CMB: its

temperature Temperature is a physical quantity that quantitatively expresses the attribute of hotness or coldness. Temperature is measurement, measured with a thermometer. It reflects the average kinetic energy of the vibrating and colliding atoms making ...

would depend on the direction of observation. With the help of Alvarez and Richard A. Muller, Smoot developed a differential

radiometer A radiometer or roentgenometer is a device for measuring the radiant flux (power) of electromagnetic radiation. Generally, a radiometer is an infrared radiation detector or an ultraviolet detector. Microwave radiometers operate in the micro ...

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 The Lockheed U-2, nicknamed the "''Dragon Lady''", is an American single-engine, high–altitude reconnaissance aircraft operated by the United States Air Force (USAF) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) since the 1950s. Designed for all- ...

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 The Doppler effect (also Doppler shift) is the change in the frequency of a wave in relation to an observer who is moving relative to the source of the wave. The ''Doppler effect'' is named after the physicist Christian Doppler, who described ...

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 The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light a ...

, and in fact the

Milky Way The Milky Way or Milky Way Galaxy is the galaxy that includes the Solar System, with the name describing the #Appearance, galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars in other arms of the galax ...

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

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 A galaxy is a system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, and dark matter bound together by gravity. The word is derived from the Greek ' (), literally 'milky', a reference to the Milky Way galaxy that contains the Solar Sys ...

and

galaxy cluster A galaxy cluster, or a cluster of galaxies, is a structure that consists of anywhere from hundreds to thousands of galaxies that are bound together by gravity, with typical masses ranging from 1014 to 1015 solar masses. Clusters consist of galax ...

s indicating that the universe was relatively

heterogeneous Homogeneity and heterogeneity are concepts relating to the uniformity of a substance, process or image. A homogeneous feature is uniform in composition or character (i.e., color, shape, size, weight, height, distribution, texture, language, i ...

on a small scale. However, these structures formed slowly. Thus, if the universe is heterogeneous today, it would have been heterogeneous at the time of the emission of the CMB as well, and 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 The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

a project involving a

satellite A satellite or an artificial satellite is an object, typically a spacecraft, placed into orbit around a celestial body. They have a variety of uses, including communication relay, weather forecasting, navigation ( GPS), broadcasting, scient ...

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 Air pollution is the presence of substances in the Atmosphere of Earth, air that are harmful to humans, other living beings or the environment. Pollutants can be Gas, gases like Ground-level ozone, ozone or nitrogen oxides or small particles li ...

. The proposal was accepted and incorporated as one of the instruments of the satellite COBE, which cost $160 million. COBE was launched on November 18, 1989, after a delay owing to the destruction of the

Space Shuttle Challenger Space Shuttle ''Challenger'' (OV-099) was a Space Shuttle orbiter manufactured by Rockwell International and operated by NASA. Named after HMS Challenger (1858), the commanding ship of a Challenger expedition, nineteenth-century scientific exp ...

. 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. The observations were "evidence for the birth of the universe" and led Smoot to say regarding the importance of his discovery that "if you're religious, it's like looking at God." George Smoot

The success of COBE was the outcome of extensive teamwork 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. Smoot had the main responsibility of measuring the small variations in the temperature of the radiation. Smoot collaborated with ''

San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. ...

'' journalist Keay Davidson to write the general-audience book '' Wrinkles in Time'', that chronicled his team's efforts. In the book ''The Very First Light'', John Mather and John Boslough complement and broaden the COBE story, and suggest that 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. Smoot eventually apologized for not following the agreed publicity plan and Mather said tensions eventually eased. Mather acknowledged that Smoot had "brought COBE worldwide publicity" the project might not normally have received.

Other projects

After COBE, Smoot took part in another experiment involving a stratospheric balloon, Millimeter Anisotropy eXperiment IMaging Array, 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 was a collaborator on the third generation CMB anisotropy observatory Planck satellite. He is also a collaborator of the design of the Supernova/Acceleration Probe, a satellite which is proposed to measure the properties of

dark energy In physical cosmology and astronomy, dark energy is a proposed form of energy that affects the universe on the largest scales. Its primary effect is to drive the accelerating expansion of the universe. It also slows the rate of structure format ...

. He has also assisted in analyzing data from the Spitzer Space Telescope in connection with measuring far infrared background radiation. Smoot also was a leader in a group that launched the Mikhailo Lomonosov April 28, 2016. Smoot is credited by

Mickey Hart Mickey Hart (born Michael Steven Hartman, September 11, 1943) is an American percussionist. He is best known as one of the two drummers of the rock band Grateful Dead. He was a member of the Grateful Dead from September 1967 until February 19 ...

for inspiring the album '' Mysterium Tremendum'', which is based, in part on "sounds" that can be extracted from the background signature of the Big Bang. , Smoot is an

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

scientist for the GTA Foundation, whose business is storing genomic sequencing data and using it in scientific applications. In November 2020, he joined Dead Sea Premier as head of research for their NUNA advanced technology anti-aging medical device development. In April 2021, he joined the

Xiaomi Xiaomi (; ) is a Chinese multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Beijing, China. It is best known for consumer electronics software electric vehicles. It is the second-largest manufacturer of smartphones in the worl ...

eco-system company Viomi as chief scientist for their AI-development. In January 2023, George Fitzgerald Smoot III joined the National Council for Science and Technology under the

President President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) * President (education), a leader of a college or university *President (government title) President may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Film and television *'' Præsident ...

of the

Republic of Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a landlocked country primarily in Central Asia, with a European Kazakhstan, small portion in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the Kazakhstan–Russia border, north and west, China to th ...

Media appearances

Smoot had a

cameo appearance A cameo appearance, also called a cameo role and often shortened to just cameo (), is a brief guest appearance of a well-known person or character in a work of the performing arts. These roles are generally small, many of them non-speaking on ...

as himself in "

The Terminator Decoupling "The Terminator Decoupling" is an episode of the American comedy television series ''The Big Bang Theory''. It first aired on CBS in the United States on March 9, 2009. It is the seventeenth episode of the The Big Bang Theory season 2, second s ...

" episode of ''

The Big Bang Theory ''The Big Bang Theory'' is an American television sitcom created by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady for CBS. It aired from September 24, 2007, to May 16, 2019, running for 12 seasons and 279 episodes. The show originally centered on five charact ...

''. He contacted the show as a fan of their often physics-based plots and was incorporated into an episode featuring him lecturing at a fictional physics symposium. He is also credited by the producer of the show with providing a joke told by Penny in the episode " The Dead Hooker Juxtaposition". In April 2019 he also appeared in ''The Big Bang Theory'' episode " The Laureate Accumulation". On September 18, 2009, Smoot appeared on an episode of the Fox television show '' Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?'' During filming, he reached the final question, "What U.S. state is home to

Acadia National Park Acadia National Park is a List of national parks of the United States, national park of the United States located along the mid-section of the Maine coast, southwest of Bar Harbor, Maine, Bar Harbor. The park includes about half of Mount Desert ...

?", to which he gave the correct answer "

Maine Maine ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the United States, and the northeasternmost state in the Contiguous United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Provinces and ...

", becoming the second person to win a million-dollar prize. On December 10, 2009, he appeared in a

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

interview of Nobel laureates, discussing the value science has to offer society. Smoot gave a 2014 TEDx lecture in which he suggested that certain aspects of physics support the

simulation hypothesis The simulation hypothesis proposes that what one experiences as the real world is actually a simulated reality, such as a computer simulation in which humans are constructs. There has been much debate over this topic in the Philosophy, philosophi ...

, the idea that our reality is a computer-generated

virtual reality Virtual reality (VR) is a Simulation, simulated experience that employs 3D near-eye displays and pose tracking to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video gam ...

. In 2016, Smoot appeared in a TV commercial for

Intuit Intuit Inc. is an American multinational business software company that specializes in financial software. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and the CEO is Sasan Goodarzi. Intuit's products include the tax preparati ...

TurboTax, advising a user of the software on what to do.Staff. (January 4, 2016
"Physics Geniuses Illustrate the Mind-Bending Simplicity of TurboTax in W+K's New Ads; Campaign will include a Super Bowl spot By David Gianatasio"
'' Adweek"

Selected publications

* Lubin, P. M. & G. F. Smoot.
"Search for Linear Polarization of the Cosmic Background Radiation"

(LBNL),

United States Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and energy production, the research and development of nuclear power, the military's nuclear w ...

, (Oct. 1978). * Gorenstein, M. V.& G. F. Smoot.
"Large-Angular-Scale Anisotropy in the Cosmic Background Radiation"

(LBNL),

, (May 1980). * Smoot, G. F., De Amici, G., Friedman, S. D., Witebsky, C., Mandolesi, N., Partridge, R. B., Sironi, G., Danese, L. & G. De Zotti.
"Low Frequency Measurement of the Spectrum of the Cosmic Background Radiation"

(LBNL),

, (June 1983). * Smoot, G. F., De Amici, G., Levin, S. & C. Witebsky.
"New Measurements of the Cosmic Background Radiation Spectrum"

(LBNL),

, (Dec. 1984). * Smoot, G., Levin, S. M., Witebsky, C., De Amici, G., Y. Rephaeli.
"An Analysis of Recent Measurements of the Temperature of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation"

(LBNL),

, (July 1987). * Ade, P., Balbi, A., Bock, J., Borrill, J., Boscaleri, A., de Bernardis, P., Ferreira, P. G., Hanany, S., Hristov, V. V., Jaffe, A. H., Lange, A. E., Lee, A. T., Mauskopf, P. D., Netterfield, C. B., Oh, S., Pascale, E., Rabii, B., Richards, P. L., Smoot, G. F., Stompor, R., Winant, C. D. & J. H. P. Wu.
"MAXIMA-1: A Measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropy on Angular Scales of 10' to 5 degrees"

(LBNL),

National Aeronautics and Space Administration The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the United States's civil space program, aeronautics research and space research. Established in 1958, it su ...

(NASA),

(NSF), KDI Precision Products, Inc., Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council UK, (June 4, 2005). *

References

External links

* * at the Energetic Cosmos Laboratory
Smoot Group Cosmology official website
at the

''Low gravity phase separator'' U.S. Patent 4027494

* including the Nobel Lecture December 8, 2006 ''Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation Anisotropies: Their Discovery and Utilization''

*

George Smoot accepts position in Moscow State University

Pariscosmo.fr
Paris Center for Cosmological Physics at APC Laboratory {{DEFAULTSORT:Smoot, George F. 1945 births Living people American agnostics 20th-century American astronomers American Nobel laureates 21st-century American physicists American cosmologists Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni Nobel laureates in Physics Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences University of California, Berkeley faculty Virtual reality Albert Einstein Medal recipients