Nobel scientists Craig Mello and John Mather to speak on origins of life and universe

Event is July 26 at Library of Congress

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A free and public event, "On the origins of life and the universe: An afternoon with 2006 Nobel Laureates Craig Mello and John Mather," will be held at the Library of Congress on 26 July from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m., in Room 119 of the Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First Street, S.E., Washington, D.C.

John Mather, 2006 Nobel Laureate in Physics, will present the talk "From the Big Bang to the Nobel Prize." He will discuss the history of the universe in a nutshell - how the universe began with a Big Bang, how it produced an Earth where sentient beings can live, and how those beings are discovering their history. Mather also will discuss NASA's plans for the next great telescope in space, the James Webb Space Telescope. Planned for launch in 2013, the new telescope will explore the first galaxies formed in the universe and investigate where stars and planets are being born today.

Craig Mello, 2006 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, will give a presentation titled "Life on a Cosmic Scale: From the Primordial Soup to a Nobel Prize-Winning Worm." He will reveal what worms, petunias and humans have in common and what this means for the future prospects of life on Earth and beyond. Mello also will explain how RNA interference (RNAi) works and describe how, along with the human genome sequence, it promises to revolutionize medicine.

The event is sponsored by the Library of Congress John W. Kluge Center and Science, Business and Technology Division, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). For additional information about the event, please contact the Kluge Center at (202) 707-2692.

Speakers

John Mather, recently named Chief Scientist at NASA, is an astrophysicist in the Observational Cosmology Laboratory at Goddard Space Flight Center and leads the James Webb Space Telescope science team. He served as project scientist for NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite, which measured the spectrum of heat radiation from the Big Bang. As principal investigator for the Far Infrared Absolute Spectrophotometer on COBE, he showed that the cosmic microwave background radiation has a blackbody spectrum within 50 parts per million, confirming the Big Bang theory to extraordinary accuracy.