Sad. Nobel laureate George Smoot, who researched the universe's origins at UC Berkeley, dies at 80

[usonian]

I knew him. A great guy. You can tell from the photos below.


https://apnews.com/article/physicist-george-smooth-big-bang-nobel-berkeley-3e4f1ac718c627806bcfd7c4653c5b54

BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) — Nobel laureate Dr. George Smoot, who conducted groundbreaking research into the origins of the universe during a long career at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, has died, the school said. He was 80.

Smoot died on Sept. 18 in Paris of a heart attack, according to a statement Monday by UC Berkeley.

Along with John Mather of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Smoot won the 2006 Nobel Prize for physics for finding the background radiation that finally pinned down the Big Bang theory, the idea that the universe was born in a rapid cosmic expansion some 14 billion years ago.

Cheers!



Nobel Prize photo gallery

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2006/smoot/photo-gallery/

At LBL 2006


Physics 7B


With Swedish Princess Madeleine



Deleted duplicate post. Sluggish network.

[hunter]

1. I love the Physics 7B photo.

Heat, electricity, and magnetism...

This is how civilization advances -- a teacher in a classroom.

[eppur_se_muova]

2. The unit of length is named after a distant relative, who is apparently still among the living.

https://aether.lbl.gov/www/personnel/smoot/smoot-measure.html

[usonian]

3. I remember that as a goofy high school student.

Can't remember why I was walking the Harvard Bridge. I took a summer high school class at MIT. Maybe some station other than Kendall Square was nearer.

Damn long time age for those Smoots. The subway was a fright. Park Street Station smelled of burnt pizza, and then some assholes from Boston Latin thought it was real funny to march down the stairs shouting Sieg Heil. Don't remember much more about the subway except passing through Atlantic Avenue on a crowded train when the fish folk got off work. Oh hell.

I later was stationed briefly at Coast Guard Base Boston, but that's for another post. I was hustling mail with a very crazy short-timer.

Miss the beans and the cod (Not really)

🦞 Lobsta, yes.

[lostnfound]

7. I remember that from my college engineering days

not in Boston, though. The Smoot was even famous in atlanta.

[NNadir]

4. I had no idea the Universe originated at Berkeley. (As a frequent placer of misplaced modifiers, I couldn't help...

...myself.)

Thanks, an interesting post.

[erronis]

5. Well, I'm sure there were plenty of big bangs there. Sorry, also.

I hung around the campus and had an early berkeley.edu email addresses.

[NNadir]

6. When I was in my 20s I never misplaced a modifier. As an old man...

...I find them lying around in the damnedest syntactical spaces.

Of course no one can prove one way or the other that the Universe didn't originate at Berkeley or some other university.

I can get "woo-woo" if I let myself.