Into The Impossible

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 to