John Mather: The Very First Light (#134)

John Mather, is a driving force in space astronomy and cosmology.
In 1989 he helped discover that the cosmic background radiation's
spectrum corresponds to black-body radiation - radiation emitted by
a dark, glowing body. The result provided evidence that the
background radiation is a remnant from the creation of the universe
in the Big Bang. John is the author of The Very First Light: The
True Inside Story of the Scientific Journey Back to the Dawn of the
Universe. It tells the story of the NASA-led team of scientists
from the COBE project that changed the way we view the universe.
They showed that the microwave radiation that fills the universe
must have come from the Big Bang itself—effectively proving this
theory beyond any doubt. It was one of the greatest scientific
findings of our generation, perhaps of all time. In this
no-holds-barred account, COBE's originator and Project Scientist,
John Mather, and science writer John Boslough provide the intimate
and startling details of how big science is done today. They tell
of the discovery of the cosmic background radiation and of the
fifteen-year struggle to design, build and launch the COBE
satellite, including the unwelcome controversy when one team member
breached the project's publication policy and stepped into the
limelight alone. The Very First Light presents a rarely seen inside
account of the world of big science, where cooperation and
competition battle for supremacy. At the height of the project,
more than 1,500 scientists, engineers, designers, and support staff
worked on the spacecraft. The project was especially difficult
because two of the three instruments were cooled to within a few
degrees of absolute zero.When the Challenger exploded in 1986, the
shuttle program was grounded indefinately, leaving the COBE with no
route to space. The last available Delta rocket was approved for
the mission, but now the team had to slash the spacecraft's
five-ton weight in half. The story of this feat provides a
remarkable behind-the-scenes look into the high-stakes, frenetic
world of a big science project and NASA itself. The Very First
Light is a portrait of science no serious reader will want to miss.
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