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Cosmos-Mapping Team wins 2017 Breakthrough Prize in Physics

2,009 views · Published 16 January 2018 · 6:12 · Indexed 8 October 2026

Channel: Scientific American Space Lab · 2018 · Science & Technology

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This year’s Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics was awarded to the team behind NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, or WMAP, a space telescope that launched in 2001 to map the cosmic microwave background—the earliest, oldest light we can detect from the universe’s infancy. The WMAP team will split the $3 million award, with its leaders receiving the largest shares. One of those leaders, WMAP’s chief theorist David Spergel, sat down to speak with Scientific American about WMAP’s science and its legacy. Spergel is also a McArthur Fellow, a professor at Princeton University, and the founding director of the Center for Computational Astrophysics at the Flatiron Institute in New York City.

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