Japanese, Canadian win Nobel Physics Prize

Around the turn of the millennium, Kajita and McDonald, using different experiments, managed to explain this by showing that neutrinos actually changed identities, or “flavours”, and therefore must have a few mass, however small.

The discovery has changed our understanding of the innermost workings of matter and can prove crucial to our view of the universe.

Brown also said the work is another success for the theory known as quantum mechanics, which deals with fundamental particles and their interactions, because that’s the only way to explain how neutrinos can change from one type to another. One of the other suggestions to solve the solar neutrino puzzle was that the neutrinos change identities.

McDonald said they have put in a “tremendous amount of work” and that he benefited from having a “very friendly collaboration among scientists from Canada, the United States, Britain, and Portugal”.

Neutrinos are the second most bountiful particles after photons, which carry light, with trillions of them streaming through our bodies every second, but their true nature has been poorly understood. And experiments are looking at whether there are other types of neutrinos beyond the three clearly observed. He is a Professor at Emeritus at Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada.

McDonald won the award along with Takaaki Kajita of Japan, who oversees the Super-Kamiokande detector.

Asman said the discovery could help explain why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe, a riddle that has eluded scientists for years.

For further details, check the academy’s information for a general audience or the advanced information with more technical depth on the neutrino mass discovery.

The victor or winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in physics are set to be announced at 0945 GMT by a committee at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

“For particle physics this was a historic discovery”, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement.

Since 1901, the committee has handed out the Nobel Prize in Physics 108 times. “I’m still so shocked I don’t really know what to say”, a grinning Kajita told a packed news conference in Tokyo.

On Monday, Tu Youyou of China, Irish-born American William Campbell, and Japan’s Satoshi Omura won the Nobel Medicine Prize for unlocking revolutionary treatments for malaria and roundworm, diseases that blight millions of lives.

The two will split about $960,000 in prize money and will receive their gold medal at a ceremony in December.

The Nobel awards week continues on Wednesday with the announcement of the winners of the Nobel Chemistry Prize.