Two scientists have been award this year’sNobel Prizein natural philosophy for their contribution to experiments showing neutrinos can change identity . Their detective work of neutrino oscillation , which allow them to vary " flavor , " bear witness that neutrino have mass , a discovery that the Nobel Prize committee say in apress release“has changed our reason of the inmost working of thing and can prove crucial to our view of the cosmos . ”
Behind photons , neutrino are the most abundant particle in the universe . Many are the result of reaction between cosmic radiation syndrome and the Earth ’s air , while others are created by nuclear reactions inside the sun . It was long believed that neutrinos were massless , but the groundbreaking ceremony discoveries made byTakaaki Kajitaof the University of Tokyo andArthur B. McDonaldof Queen ’s University , Kingston , Canada , show these corpuscle can change identities and therefore must have mass .
In the former 1990s Kajita discovered that neutrinos from the atmosphere switched from one individuality to another on their agency to the Super - Kamiokande sensor in Japan . Around the same fourth dimension , the enquiry group top by McDonald see that neutrinos from the Sunday were n’t disappearing on their head trip to Earth , but or else change identities .
For decennary physicist had been mystify when their theoretic computation of the number of neutrons came out up to two - thirds gamey than their strong-arm measurements on Earth . These two experiments show that the neutrino have n’t die anywhere , they ’ve just arrogate a unlike class ; as a result of these determination , neutrino are now thought to come in three " flavors . " The discoveries also challenge theStandard Model , a popular particle natural philosophy hypothesis of the central constituents of the universe that relies on the supposition that neutrinos are massless .
acute effort keep to be made around the world to seize neutrinos and study their properties . physicist predict any raw discovery could have a vast shock on our agreement of the constitution , account , and hereafter of the universe .
