"We have taken a big step towards solving a century-old mystery, " said JamesCronin of the University of Chicago, who, in 1991, conceived the observatory together with Prof Watson.
"I think there's no question that he's a pragmatic politician, and I think he has seen the need to be bipartisan at least in rhetoric and maybe in practice, but I wouldn't over-emphasise this, in that the US is a very different kind of political system, " says JamesCronin, a professor of history at Boston College.