Nobel Prize winner John Mather entertains UNM audience with science and stunning images
January 26, 2024 - Steve Carr
It was Christmas morning in 2021 when, on behalf of 8 billion current humans, 10,000 future observers, 20,000 engineers and technicians, 100 scientists worldwide, and three space agencies, the greatest telescope ever made took off from Europe’s Spaceport on an Ariane 5 rocket in the French Guiana, South America.
The idea for a new telescope to replace the Hubble Telescope began in 1989 at a Next Generation Space Telescope Workshop at the Space Telescope Science Institute. Nearly 35 years later, the dream became reality when early results from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) started to be revealed and talked about with incredible images based on the telescope’s ability to observe infrared light.
On Thursday night, the UNM Department of Physics & Astronomy hosted Nobel Prize winner John Mather who presented a talk, Opening the Infrared Treasure Chest with JWST, to a captive audience that spilled over into adjacent rooms at The University of New Mexico’s Physics & Astronomy and Interdisciplinary Building (PAÍS).
Mather, a senior astrophysicist in the Observational Cosmology Laboratory located at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., led the JWST science team as Senior Project Scientist (1995-2023) for the Webb telescope and represented the scientific interests within the project management. He won the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physics, chosen by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and shares the prize with George F. Smoot of the University of California for their work using the COBE satellite to measure the heat radiation from the Big Bang.
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