"I want to tell you the story of the universe from beginning to end -- but I'll have to leave out some parts," began 2006 Nobel Laureate John Mather in his Feb. 16 public talk in Schwartz Auditorium.

His lecture, titled "From the Big Bang to the Nobel Prize and on to James Webb Space Telescope and the Discovery of Alien Life," covered nearly 20 billion years of the past and future of the universe. Mather is a senior astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center and spoke as the 2010-11 Yervant Terzian Lecturer.

His story began with the origin of the big bang theory in 1929, when it was observed that the universe was expanding. "It looks like the entire universe is rushing away from us in every direction," Mather said.

The heat left over from the big bang, called the cosmic microwave background radiation, can be observed in every direction in the sky, said Mather, who shared the Nobel Prize with George Smoot for measuring irregularities in this radiation with the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite mission.

The name "big bang" was coined by the late astronomer Fred Hoyle, an outspoken opponent to the theory. Mather said he prefers the name given in a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon: "Horrendous Space Kablooey."

But when it comes to the origin of everything, the name is beside the point. What matters is that "something grand and mysterious occurred at the beginning," Mather said.

He expressed a deep reverence for the knowledge we have gained about the most ancient of histories. We know, for example, that nuclei of helium atoms formed when the universe was only three minutes old.

Our knowledge of future events is impressive as well, Mather said. We know that in a billion years, the sun will grow too hot and bright for life on Earth to persist as we know it. In 5 billion years, the sun will swell into a red giant star and our neighboring Andromeda Galaxy will collide with the Milky Way.

"It should be a spectacular site," Mather said, "I wish I could be there."

Yet, astronomers are still grappling with such questions, he said, as: What is dark matter? What is dark energy? And is there life elsewhere in the universe?

Mather's next big project, the James Webb Space Telescope, will search for answers. This enormous engineering feat, with a 6.5-meter mirror and a sunshield the size of a tennis court, will operate a million miles from Earth, so far that there will be no chance to service the telescope in space, as was done for the Hubble Space Telescope.

"If it doesn't work, we're out of luck," Mather said.

The telescope was originally slated to launch in 2014, but that date has been pushed back due to budget constraints. "If we get more money now it means we can launch sooner, but unfortunately Congress is in a bad mood," Mather said.

When asked about the benefits of launching one large, expensive space telescope over many smaller spacecraft, Mather responded that the big discoveries come from big projects. "Columbus didn't get here in rowboats," he said.

While on campus, Mather also gave an astronomy colloquium Feb. 17 on the upcoming Webb telescope project.

The lectureship honors Terzian, the David C. Duncan Professor in the Physical Sciences, and was established with a gift from Charles Mund Jr.

Graduate student Melissa Rice is a writer intern for the Cornell Chronicle.