The Big Winners

US astrophysicist John Mather, left, at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, shows some of the earliest data from the NASA Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) Satellite, centre, on October 3. Mather and George F. Smoot, right, astrophysicists with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley won the 2006 Nobel Physics Prize for their work on the 'Big Bang' theory on the origin of the universe. PHOTO: AFP