Jordan CrawfordAP Physics BStandishMay 23, 2014George Smoot III was born on February 20, 1945 in Yukon, Florida. Smoot went to MIT and double majored in mathematics and physics, soon after earning a doctorate in particle physics. Smoot has since attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he is now a professor. Smoot also has a cousin, Oliver R. Smoot, who attended MIT and was president of the American National Standards Institute. Smoot began his career in 1971 as a research physicist at the University of California, Berkley, Space Sciences Laboratory. He worked with Luis Alvarez on a high-altitude particle physics experiment, consisting mainly of weather balloons. This led to his joint appointment at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Smoot became a physics professor at Berkeley in 1994. George Smoot is also an actor. He made two cameo appearances on CBS' "The Big Bang," where he lectured and participated in panels. Smoot has given two talks at TED events discussing "The Design of the Universe" and "You're a Simulation and Physics Can Prove It." In 2009, George Smoot became the first person to win the million-dollar prize for "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?" Smoot is the author of over 200 scientific articles and his own book entitled "Wrinkles in Time". The book focuses on Smoot's discovery; the “seeds” from which the universe grew and the journey that took it forward, for 20 years, to find the “Holy Grail of science”. The research in his book eventually led to him winning the Nobel Prize, and his book was reprinted with a quote from Stephen Hawking that said "the scientific discovery of the century, if not of all time." George Smoot's most significant discovery began in April 1992. ..... half of paper ...... is causing an acceleration of the expansion of the universe. Planck, funded by the European Space Agency (ESA), is a mission to provide answers about how the universe began, how it transformed and how it will continue into our future. Planck's goal is to measure the remnants of the radiation that filled the universe, the CMB, with even greater precision than the COBE satellite. Smoot Has been involved with Planck since its inception in 1992, held the Cosmic Background Radiation Anisotropy Satellite (COBRAS) which led to a more definitive examination of the CMB. George Smoot's discovery of the blackbody shape and anisotropy of the CMB has been credited as one of the most important scientific discoveries ever. His research supports the widely accepted theory about the beginnings of our universe and opens new doors to research and understanding the patterns of our seemingly random universe.