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John C. Mather, a senior astrophysicist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and senior project scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), has won the 2006 Nobel Physics Prize.

Mather shares the prize with George F. Smoot, a professor of physics at the University of California at Berkeley, for work that helped solidify the Big Bang theory for the origin of the universe. Mather and Smoot were members of a science team that used NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite to measure the diffuse microwave background radiation, which is considered a relic of the Big Bang.

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      Peters hopes to pass that feeling of empowerment on to the Artemis Generation. “Empowerment to be themselves, to do the hard things, and to not limit themselves,” she said. “We need to take advantage of all the opportunities we can, and not let the fear of failure or not being ‘good enough’ stop us from going where we want to.”
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