George Smoot switched to cosmology and began work at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , collaborating with Luis Walter Alvarez on the High Altitude Particle Physics Experiment , a stratospheric weather balloon designed to detect antimatter in Earth 's upper atmosphere , the presence of which was predicted by the now discredited steady state theory of cosmology .
Professor Smoot began to study cosmology , and went to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory where he worked with Luis Walter Alvarez on the experiment HAPPE , a high up weather balloon for detecting antimatter in the upper atmosphere .