These 12 People Are Changing Science

On Sunday, some of the smartest minds in science and math will gather at the NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley for the Breakthrough Prize, one of the biggest prizes in science. Several scientists will be recognized for their research, with 12 individuals receiving substantial funding for their work in advancing life sciences, physics and mathematics. Founded in 2012 by Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg & Priscilla Chan, Yuri & Julia Milner, and Anne Wojcicki, this year the annual prize provided $22 million in awards. Here are some of the winners whose work may be changing your life soon: PHYSICS Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) It’s not easy to get worked up about the fact that the temperature of the universe varies by 200 millionths of a degree on the Kelvin scale from place to place. But that newly discovered fact becomes a lot more interesting when you realize that by knowing it, we now have a better idea than ever how old the universe is, what its shape is, what it’s made of and how it looked in its infancy, when it was just .003% of its current 13.7 billion year age. That’s what the team of scientists behind the NASA spacecraft known as the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) accomplished during the nine years the ship operated from 2001 to 2010. Their findings are only beginning to be analyzed for what they teach us about cosmological physics and the origins of everything. Of the 27 people who are part of the WMAP team...
Source: TIME.com: Top Science and Health Stories - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized anne wojcicki Breakthrough Prize healthytime Mark Zuckerberg Math onetime Physics priscilla chan Science sergey brin Silicon Valley Yuri Milner Source Type: news