Neutrino oscillations discovery wins Noble Prize
6 Oct 2015 by Evoluted New Media
Takaaki Kajita and Arthur McDonald's discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrino particles have mass, has scooped this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics.
Takaaki Kajita and Arthur McDonald's discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrino particles have mass, has scooped this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics.
They have demonstrated that neutrinos – subatomic particles produced by the decay of radioactive elements – change identities and that they have mass. This discovery has changed the understanding of the innermost workings of matter and can prove crucial to the view of the Universe.
Takaaki Kajita from the University of Tokyo, Kashiwa in Japan presented the discovery that neutrinos from the atmosphere switch between two identities on their way to the Super-Kamiokande detector. Arthur McDonald from Queen’s University, Kingston in Canada demonstrated that the neutrinos from the Sun were not disappearing on their way to Earth but instead they were captured with a different identity when arriving to the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory.
This discovery led to the far-reaching conclusion that neutrinos, which for a long time were considered massless, must have some mass, however small. This showed that the standard model of the innermost workings of matter cannot be the complete theory of the fundamental constituents of the Universe.
Next, the researchers will aim to capture neutrino particles and examine their properties. New discoveries about their deepest secrets are expected to change the current understanding of the history, structure and future fate of the Universe.
The 8 million SEK (£0.6 million) prize will be shared equally between the two Laureates.
The awards were established in the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, and first awarded in 1901. 108 Nobel Prizes in Physics have so far been awarded to 196 laureates. 47 have been given to one Laureate only, and just 2 women have been awarded the Physics Prize so far – including Marie Curie.
