Stockholm, Oct 7: Takaaki Kajita of Japan and Arthur McDonald of Canada won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for discovering the “chameleon-like” nature of neutrinos, work that yielded the crucial insight that the tiny particles have mass.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the two researchers had made key contributions to experiments showing that neutrinos change identities as they whiz through the universe at nearly the speed of light.
Neutrinos are miniscule particles created in nuclear reactions, such as in the sun and the stars, or in nuclear power plants. There are three kinds of neutrinos and the laureates showed they oscillate from one kind to another, dispelling the long-held notion that they were massless.
“The discovery has changed our understanding of the innermost workings of matter and can prove crucial to our view of the universe,” the academy said.
Kajita, 56, is director of Institute for Cosmic Ray Research and professor at the University of Tokyo. McDonald, 72, is a professor emeritus at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada. The winners will split the 8 million Swedish kronor (about USD 960,000) prize money. Each winner will also get a diploma and a gold medal at the prize ceremony December 10. PTI
