2006 Nobel Prize in Physics: ¡­

2006 Nobel Prize in Physics: The discovery by John Mather and George Smoot of ¡°cosmic ripples,¡± which won them the Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday, was lauded in 1992 by cosmologist Stephen Hawking as ¡°the greatest discovery of the century, if not of all time.¡±

While most physicists do not go that far, they are universal in their praise of the experiment, in which the pair and their team designed a satellite and used it to find proof of the Big Bang theory of the universe¡¯s origins.

They found faint variations in microwave radiation that dated back to just 300,000 years after the fiery birth of the universe.