Nobel Prize for Physics awarded to neutrino scientists

The $960,000 award goes to Takaaki Kajita of Japan and Arthur B. McDonald of Canada, whose experiments around the beginning of the 21 century reshaped the “Standard Model” of particle physics. In making his discovery McDonald used one of the deepest underground physics laboratories in the world: the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, located in a nickel mine two kilometers beneath the Earth’s surface in northern Ontario. The discovery was described by the Nobel committee as “groundbreaking” because it exposed the Standard Model of particle physics – which has survived repeated experimental challenges for more than 20 years – as flawed because it required neutrinos to be without mass. In 1956 Neutrinos were proven to exist by Frederick Reines and Clyde Cowan; since that time, physicists and cosmologists have been trying to learn more about them and how to control them. The finding that they transform themselves has “changed our understanding of the innermost workings of matter”, said the academy.

For his research, Dr. McDonald has received a number of awards and recognition including being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth in 2009.

The Nobel-winning discoveries did more than answer the question of the seemingly missing neutrinos.

In addition, neutrinos would not be able to oscillate, or change their identities, if they had zero mass, physicists say.

What are they? Neutrinos are one of the fundamental particles that make up the universe, but they’re also among the least understood and for decades remained hypothetical.

By uncovering the “chameleon-like” nature of neutrinos, the laureates had solved a long-standing puzzle in particle physics that could alter our grasp of the cosmos, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.

Neutrinos must have mass for this metamorphosis to take place and the experiment conducted demonstrated the existence of neutrino oscillations.

In 1999, McDonald announced that neutrinos from the sun were not disappearing, but merely changing disguises, on their way to Earth. Most that reach Earth were created by nuclear reactions inside the Sunday.

Arthur McDonald of Queen’s University and Takaaki Kajita of the University of Tokyo.

Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel created the prizes in 1895 to honor work in physics, chemistry, literature and peace.

Kajita, like most Nobel Prize winners, was surprised to get the call this morning letting him know of his achievement.

The prize committee announced the names of the winners on Tuesday.

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.