Kajita and McDonald will share around 960,000 US dollars in prize money and be inducted into the Nobel laureates hall of fame, which boasts a few of science’s biggest game changers since 1901, including the likes of theoretical physicist Albert Einstein who gave the world the theory of relativity, Niels Bohr who revolutionized thinking about quantum physics and Marie Curie, who made great advances in the study of radioactivity.
Advertisement
The Nobel Committee noted that the discovery of these scientists have helped in changing the understanding of the innermost working of matter and can prove crucial to our view of the universe.
“On behalf of all Canadians, I congratulate Arthur B. McDonald on co-winning this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics, sharing the prestigious global honour with Japanese scientist Takaaki Kajita”, said Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Neutrinos are the second most bountiful particles after photons, the particles of light, with trillions of them streaming through our bodies every second, but their true nature has been poorly understood.
In 1988, Kajita announced the probability that neutrinos have mass, based on the data of “atmospheric neutrinos”, which emerge when cosmic rays from space collide with the Earth’s atmosphere. The scientists were able show that neutrinos change their type as they travel from the core of the sun to a detector in the mine, “which means they have mass – something that is beyond the standard model of elementary physics and a real contribution to science in that way”.
Asked how he felt when he realized Tuesday that his work was suddenly going to receive the world’s focus, McDonald said, “It’s a very daunting experience, needless to say”.
Neutrinos are miniscule particles created in nuclear reactions, such as in the sun and the stars, or in nuclear power plants.
Meanwhile, McDonald’s research group was demonstrating that solar neutrinos were not “disappearing” on their way to Earth, but were being “captured with a different identity” when they arrived at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory.
The two experiments then discovered that the neutrinos had changed identities.
For particle physics this was a historic discovery. Neutrino’s come in three “flavors” (although they don’t carry a taste, just like Domino’s pizza) called electron, tau and muon. Koshiba won the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics for the first detection of neutrinos using a neutrino detector he had designed.
“It changes our understanding of the cosmos itself”.
The prize announcements continue with chemistry on Wednesday, literature on Thursday, the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday and the economics award next Monday.
The prize for medicine was awarded on Monday to three scientists for their work in developing drugs to fight parasitic diseases including malaria and elephantiasis.
Advertisement
Each victor will also get a diploma and a gold medal at the prize ceremony on December. 10.
