STOCKHOLM (AP) — Two scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for key discoveries about a cosmic particle that whizzes through space at nearly the speed of light, passing easily through Earth and even your body.

Takaaki Kajita of Japan and Arthur McDonald of Canada were honored for showing that these tiny particles, called neutrinos, have mass. That's the quality we typically experience as weight.

"The discovery has changed our understanding of the innermost workings of matter and can prove crucial to our view of the universe," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in awarding the prize.

The work dispelled the long-held notion that neutrinos had no mass.

Neutrinos come in three types, or "flavors," and what the scientists actually showed is that neutrinos spontaneously shift between types. That in turn means they must have mass.


Kajita, 56, is director of the Institute for Cosmic Ray Research and professor at the University of Tokyo. McDonald, 72, is a professor emeritus at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.

McDonald told reporters in Stockholm by phone that the discovery helped scientists fit neutrinos into theories of fundamental physics.

Kajita, who initially told a news conference at his university that "my mind has gone completely blank. I don't know what to say," went on to stress that many people had contributed to his work.

"The universe where we live in is still full of unknowns," he said. "A major discovery cannot be achieved in a day or two. It takes a lot of people and a long time."

The existence of neutrinos was first proven in 1956. They come from a variety of sources in the cosmos, on Earth and in Earth's atmosphere. Most that reach Earth were created by nuclear reactions inside the sun. Trillions pass through your body every second

I dont understand what that is all about, but nice discovery tho


But I dont know why the science community holds on to a postulation as to the sun experiencing nuclear reaction as though it has proven beyond reasonable doubt!
It is disgraceful and smacks of the same egomania found in the religious circle.
Simply accepting that we dont know the answer because we were not there when it happened and its relevance to our lives is not established, so we should not give a Bleep how the world came about, will not kill anybody

White men are busy discovering new things while black people are only after corruption

tos4u:
White men are busy discovering new things while black people are only after corruption

No let inferiority complex kill you ooh,
So you never see one discovery by a black man to appreciate?


By the way, where did a director of an institute and a prof emeritus see the time to conduct this kind of research?
All I see is a lot of students who's names have not been mentioned!

Cool

Wow

This is a fundamental discovery

If millions pass through the body every seconds, and they have mass

Then the mass must be so small or negligible for we not to feel the effects,

Anyway, well-done men