{"id":18717,"date":"2017-12-03T18:28:18","date_gmt":"2017-12-03T10:28:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/breakthrough-prize-ceremony-shines-glitzy-scientific-spotlight-on-cosmic-mappers\/"},"modified":"2017-12-03T18:28:18","modified_gmt":"2017-12-03T10:28:18","slug":"breakthrough-prize-ceremony-shines-glitzy-scientific-spotlight-on-cosmic-mappers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/breakthrough-prize-ceremony-shines-glitzy-scientific-spotlight-on-cosmic-mappers\/","title":{"rendered":"Breakthrough Prize ceremony shines glitzy scientific spotlight on cosmic mappers"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_381560\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-381560\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-381560\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/171203-wmap-630x315.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"630\" height=\"315\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/171203-wmap-630x315.png 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/171203-wmap-768x384.png 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/171203-wmap-1260x630.png 1260w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-381560\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A color-coded projection map of the full sky shows temperature variations as measured by NASA\u2019s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. (NASA Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>This year\u2019s Breakthrough Prizes, cast as the \u201cOscars of Science,\u201d are going to genetic engineers, disease fighters, math whizzes&nbsp;\u2014 and the scientists on the cosmos-mapping team behind the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, or WMAP.<\/p>\n<p>Today\u2019s award of $22 million in prizes is being wrapped into a ceremony at NASA\u2019s Ames Research Center that combines Hollywood glitz with Silicon Valley brainpower.<\/p>\n<p>Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman is the host for the show, which is being&nbsp;televised by National Geographic&nbsp;and streamed live via Facebook and YouTube at 7 p.m. PT tonight. Celebrity presenters include Ashton Kutcher (\u201cThat \u201970s Show\u201d); his wife, Mila Kunis (\u201cBad Moms\u201d); and Kerry Washington (\u201cScandal\u201d).<\/p>\n<p>The prize program was established in 2012 by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner and his wife, Julia Milner, in league with Google co-founder Sergey Brin, 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan.<\/p>\n<p>It ranks among science\u2019s richest award programs, with seven $3 million prizes being awarded this year in life sciences, fundamental physics and mathematics. Another $1 million is going out to early-career scientists, students and teachers.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"LIVE - Morgan Freeman hosts the 2018 Breakthrough Prize Ceremony | Nat Geo Live\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/sul1OZrtMgI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This year\u2019s physics award is notable in that it\u2019s being shared by 27 researchers on the science team for WMAP, which produced a precedent-setting map of the cosmic microwave background radiation nearly 15 years ago.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is amazing, and certainly surprising,\u201d Charles Bennett, an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University and the principal investigator for the WMAP mission, told GeekWire in advance of tonight\u2019s ceremony. \u201cWe knew we were doing something important, but you never know how it\u2019s going to be received until it all happens.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bennett and four other team leaders&nbsp;\u2014 the University of British Columbia\u2019s Gary Hinshaw and Princeton\u2019s Norman Jarosik, David Spergel and Lyman Page&nbsp;\u2014 will take the biggest shares of the $3 million prize. But everyone involved in the project will benefit.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_381565\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-381565\" style=\"width: 200px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-381565 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/bennett2-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"Charles Bennett\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/bennett2-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/bennett2.jpg 466w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-381565\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Astrophysicist Charles Bennett is among the winners of this year\u2019s Breakthrough Prizes, styled as the \u201cOscars of Science.\u201d (JHU Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Back in 2003, WMAP\u2019s scientists analyzed tiny temperature variations in the microwave background radiation, left behind by the afterglow of the Big Bang, to come up with what were then unprecedented measurements of the universe\u2019s age and composition.<\/p>\n<p>The results suggested that the Big Bang happened about 13.8 billion years ago, producing a universe that is dominated by mysterious ingredients known as dark matter and dark energy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s relatively simple, but at the same time strange, that only about 5 percent of the universe is atoms,\u201d Bennett said.<\/p>\n<p>About 25 percent consists of dark matter, an exotic class of stuff that can be detected only by its gravitational effect. Dark energy, a factor contributing to the accelerating expansion of the universe, accounts for the other 70 percent.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn one fell swoop, we had a quantification of the universe that was pretty robust,\u201d Bennett said.<\/p>\n<p>At the time, the findings were hailed as a \u201ccosmic convergence\u201d of measurements made by multiple instruments. Since then, follow-up campaigns such as the European Space Agency\u2019s Planck mission have largely confirmed WMAP\u2019s view of the universe&nbsp;\u2014 but Bennett acknowledged that some nagging \u201ctensions\u201d have cropped up and have yet to be reconciled.<\/p>\n<p>For example, the measurements derived from observations of the universe at different scales of the \u201ccosmic distance ladder\u201d suggest that the universe is expanding significantly more rapidly than scientists would have thought, based on data from WMAP and Planck.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI predict that these tensions are going to get worse,\u201d Bennett said.<\/p>\n<p>Future studies could resolve the tensions, lead to new insights into the nature of dark energy and dark matter, or even open the door to new theories and completely new perspectives on the cosmos.<\/p>\n<p>The multibillion-dollar Large Hadron Collider and other particle detectors could make headway on solving the cosmic mysteries. So could ground-based telescopes such as the Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor, or CLASS, a project led by Johns Hopkins University. Meanwhile, in space, the European Space Agency\u2019s Gaia and Euclid missions should help crack the case.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe future is pretty bright for making additional Breakthrough Prizes in cosmology,\u201d Bennett said.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Here\u2019s the lineup of other Breakthrough Prizes announced today:<\/strong><\/p>\n<h4>Life Sciences<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Don Cleveland, University of California at San Diego:<\/strong>&nbsp;\u201cFor elucidating the molecular pathogenesis of a type of inherited ALS, including the role of glia in neurodegeneration, and for establishing antisense oligonucleotide therapy in animal models of ALS and Huntington disease.\u201d<\/li>\n<li><strong>Joanne Chory, Salk Institute for Biological Studies and Howard Hughes Medical Institute:<\/strong>&nbsp;\u201cFor discovering the molecular mechanisms by which plants extract information from light and shade to modify their programs of shoot and leaf growth in the photosynthetic harvest of light.\u201d<\/li>\n<li><strong>Kim Nasmyth, University of Oxford:<\/strong>&nbsp;\u201cFor elucidating the sophisticated mechanism that mediates the perilous separation of duplicated chromosomes during cell division and thereby prevents genetic diseases such as cancer.\u201d<\/li>\n<li><strong>Peter Walter, University of California at San Francisco:<\/strong>&nbsp;\u201cFor elucidating the unfolded protein response, a cellular quality-control system that detects disease-causing unfolded proteins and directs cells to take corrective measures. \u201c<\/li>\n<li><strong>Kazutoshi Mori, Kyoto University:<\/strong>&nbsp;\u201cAlso, for elucidating the unfolded protein response, a cellular quality-control system that detects disease-causing unfolded proteins and directs cells to take corrective measures.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>Mathematics<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>The University of Utah\u2019s Christopher Hacon and UCSD\u2019s James McKernan:<\/strong> \u201cFor transformational contributions to birational algebraic geometry, especially to the minimal model program in all dimensions.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>New Horizons Prizes<\/h4>\n<p><strong>$100,000 prizes recognize the achievements of early-career physicists and mathematicians:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Physics:&nbsp;<\/strong>Christopher Hirata&nbsp;(Ohio State University),&nbsp;Andrea Young&nbsp;(University of California, Santa Barbara), and&nbsp;Douglas Stanford&nbsp;(Institute for Advanced Study and Stanford University).<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Mathematics:<\/strong> Aaron Naber&nbsp;(Northwestern University),&nbsp;Maryna Viazovska&nbsp;(\u00c9cole&nbsp;Polytechnique F\u00e9d\u00e9rale de Lausanne),&nbsp;Zhiwei Yun&nbsp;(Yale University), and&nbsp;Wei Zhang&nbsp;(Massachusetts Institute of Technology&nbsp;and Columbia University).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>Breakthrough Junior Challenge<\/h4>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The third annual Breakthrough Junior Challenge recognizes&nbsp;<strong>Hillary Diane Andales<\/strong>,18, of the Philippines. She will receive $250,000 in educational prizes; her science teacher will receive $50,000; and her school will receive a new science laboratory valued at $100,000, designed by and in partnership with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Andales was the top scorer in the Popular Vote Challenge that was conducted as part of last year\u2019s Breakthrough Junior Challenge.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This year\u2019s video, submitted in the physics category, focused on reference frames in general relativity:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Hillary Andales, Philippines, Winner, Asia Regional Champion:  2017 Breakthrough Junior Challenge\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/TLfZiGQjVT8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>The Breakthrough Prize ceremony is being aired at 7 p.m. PT today on the National Geographic Channel, and streamed on the Breakthrough Facebook and YouTube channels as well as National Geographic TV\u2019s Facebook and YouTube channels.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A color-coded projection map of the full sky shows temperature variations as measured by NASA\u2019s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. (NASA Photo) This year\u2019s Breakthrough Prizes, cast as the \u201cOscars of Science,\u201d are going to genetic engineers, disease fighters, math whizzes&nbsp;\u2014 and the scientists on the cosmos-mapping team behind the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, or WMAP. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5178,2050,4570,21,5302],"class_list":["post-18717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-breakthrough-prize","tag-cosmology","tag-physics","tag-space","tag-wmap"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18717"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18717\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}