A Japanese and a Canadian scientist yesterday won the Nobel Prize for Physics for discovering that elusive subatomic particles called neutrinos have mass, opening a new window onto the fundamental nature of the universe.
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.
Takaaki Kajita and Arthur McDonald’s breakthrough was the discovery of a phenomenon called neutrino oscillation that has upended scientific thinking and promises to change understanding about the history and future fate of the cosmos.
Photo: AFP
“It is a discovery that will change the books in physics, so it is really a major discovery,” said Barbro Asman, a Nobel committee member and professor of physics at Stockholm University.
In awarding the prize, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the finding had “changed our understanding of the innermost workings of matter and can prove crucial to our view of the universe.”
For many years, the central enigma with neutrinos was that up to two-thirds fewer of them were detected on Earth than expected.
Photo: Reuters
Kajita and McDonald, using different experiments, managed to explain this around the turn of the millennium by showing that neutrinos actually changed identities, or “flavors,” and therefore must have some mass, however small.
McDonald, a Canadian citizen born in 1943, was awakened by the Nobel committee and asked to call in to the prize announcement in Stockholm.
“It’s a very daunting experience, needless to say,” he told reporters by telephone. “Fortunately, I have many colleagues as well who share this prize with me.”
He said that the discovery not only gave scientists a more complete understanding of the world at a fundamental level, but could also shed light on the science behind fusion power, which drives the sun and could one day be tapped as a source of electricity on Earth.
“Yes, there certainly was a eureka moment in this experiment when we were able to see that neutrinos appeared to change from one type to the other in traveling from the sun to the Earth,” he said.
Informed by phone of the prize, Kajita, who was born in 1959 in Japan, and directs the Institute for Cosmic Ray Research at the University of Tokyo, said simply: “Kind of unbelievable.”
Kajita and McDonald are to share the 8 million Swedish kronor (US$960,000) prize. They joined 199 laureates, including Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr and Marie Curie, who have been honored with the prize since 1901.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique