Page 28 - ATD 07 October,2015

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SCIENCEWednesday 7 October 2015

Nobel Prize for key discoveries about subatomic particles

KARL RITTER contributed to his work. Kamiokande detector in clared, “This is really one his team hopes to start
MALCOLM RITTER “The universe where we Japan had changed “fla- of the milestones in our un- working on next year.
Associated Press live in is still full of un- vors.” Three years later, derstanding of nature.” The Nobel winners will split
STOCKHOLM (AP) — Two knowns,” he said. “A ma- while working at Canada’s The findings “really inspired the 8 million Swedish kro-
scientists won the Nobel jor discovery cannot be Sudbury Neutrino Obser- a whole global community nor (about $960,000) prize
Prize in physics Tuesday for achieved in a day or two. vatory, McDonald found of scientists to drop what money. Each winner also
key discoveries about a It takes a lot of people and that neutrinos coming they were doing and try to gets a diploma and a gold
cosmic particle that whiz- a long time.” from the sun also switched understand the neutrino,” medal at the prize cere-
zes through space at near-
ly the speed of light, pass- A screen shows the winners as members of the Nobel Assembly announce the winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in physics, in
ing easily through Earth
and even your body. Stockholm, Tuesday Oct. 6, 2015.
Takaaki Kajita of Japan
and Arthur McDonald of Associated Press
Canada were honored
for showing that these tiny The existence of neutrinos identities. said Joseph Lykken, depu- mony on Dec. 10.
particles, called neutri- was first proven in 1956. “It changes our under- ty director of the Fermi Na- On Monday, the Nobel
nos, have mass. That’s the They come from a variety standing of the funda- tional Accelerator Labora- Prize in medicine went to
quality we typically experi- of sources in the cosmos, mentals of particle physics, tory in Batavia, Illinois. scientists from Japan, the
ence as weight. on Earth and in Earth’s and particles make up ev- Still unknown: Just how U.S. and China who dis-
“The discovery has atmosphere. Most that erything in the universe,” much do neutrinos weigh? covered drugs that are
changed our understand- reach Earth were created said Robert G.W. Brown, “Neutrinos are a million now used to fight malaria
ing of the innermost work- by nuclear reactions in- chief executive officer of times lighter than an elec- and other tropical diseas-
ings of matter and can side the sun. Trillions pass the American Institute of tron, which is a charged es. The prize announce-
prove crucial to our view through your body every Physics. version of a neutrino,” said ments continue with
of the universe,” the Royal second. Antonio Ereditato, direc- Guido Drexlin, a neutrino chemistry on Wednesday,
Swedish Academy of Sci- Kajita showed in 1998 tor of the Albert Einstein expert at the Karlsruhe In- literature on Thursday, the
ences said in awarding the that neutrinos created in Center for Fundamental stitute of Technology in Nobel Peace Prize on Fri-
prize. Earth’s atmosphere and Physics at the University Germany. Determining day and the economics
The work dispelled the captured at the Super- of Bern, Switzerland, de- their weight is something award next Monday.q
long-held notion that neu-
trinos had no mass.
Neutrinos come in three
types, or “flavors,” and
what the scientists actually
showed is that neutrinos
spontaneously shift be-
tween types. That in turn
means they must have
mass.
Kajita, 56, is director of the
Institute for Cosmic Ray
Research and professor at
the University of Tokyo. Mc-
Donald, 72, is a professor
emeritus at Queen’s Uni-
versity in Kingston, Ontario.
McDonald told reporters
in Stockholm by phone
that the discovery helped
scientists fit neutrinos into
theories of fundamental
physics.
Kajita, who initially told a
news conference at his
university that “my mind
has gone completely
blank. I don’t know what
to say,” went on to stress
that many people had