The road to the Nobel Prize for Physics began more than 30 years ago for Canadian professor Arthur McDonald, who learned Tuesday that he is the co-winner of the 2015 award. He has also served as the chief at the Research Center for Cosmic Neutrinos, an affiliate of the ICRR, since 1999. The scientists were honored for determining that the subatomic particles neutrinos do have mass. “I would like to see young people try to join our pursuit of mystery solving”, said Kajita at a press conference organized by his university.
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While McDonald and Kajita have cracked a key part of the puzzle, other questions remain, including the exact masses of neutrinos and whether different types exist beyond the electron-neutrinos, muon-neutrinos and tau-neutrinos identified so far. Although his favourite particles are neutral, his home province can’t be as we take pride and pleasure in the Nobel committee’s recognition of his work. Kajita showed in 1998 that the neutrinos created when powerful cosmic rays strike Earth’s atmosphere change flavors as they pass through the planet.
Over the years, many scientists have won the Nobel Prize in Physics for discoveries related to neutrinos.
Neutrinos have pretty much toppled the Higgs boson as the most exciting particle at the moment. Since they could not be diverted by electromagnetic forces (being neutral) or by gravity (being thought at that time to have no mass), where were the missing solar neutrinos?
Neutrinos are miniscule particles created in nuclear reactions, such as in the sun and the stars. Kajita and McDonald both discovered that neutrinos are able to change identities, and in order to do so, they must possess mass – contrasting with previous conclusions about them. Kajita, working at the Super-Kamiokande detector in Japan, showed the neutrinos can change between their multiple “flavors” on the way from the sun to the Earth.
“It really helps us to understand the most basic physics of particles in the universe – how this universe is constructed and how all matter in this universe is constructed”, Robert G.W. Brown, chief executive of the American Institute of Physics, said in a statement.
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The winners will split the eight million Swedish kronor (NZ$1.8 million) prize money. In 2010 he received the Killam Prize in the Natural Sciences, in 2011 received the Henry Marshall Tory Medal from the Royal Society of Canada, its highest award for scientific achievement; and in 2013 he was awarded the European Physics Society HEP Division Giuseppe and Vanna Cocconi Prize for Particle Astrophysics. This new Nobel prize winning discovery may even play into improvements in the designs of fusion reactors as research in the field progresses. On Wednesday, the Nobel chemistry Prize will be announced, followed by literature on Thursday and economics next Monday.
