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STOCKHOLM The finding that subatomic particles called neutrinos have mass and change of identity as they travel through the Universe was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 2015 .
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced yesterday that the Japanese scientist Takaaki Kajita and Canadian Arthur McDonald were deserving of the Nobel since found the “piece of the puzzle” that physicists had faced for decades.
“The discovery changed our understanding of the innermost workings of matter and could be crucial to our vision of the universe,” said the Academy.
Kajita and McDonald demonstrated separately that neutrinos suffer from “Metamorphosis”, ie, they can switch to any of the three types of neutrinos (electronic, muon and tau) and this is possible only if they have mass.
Takaaki Kajita discovered 15 years ago in its neutrino observatory of Super-Kamiokande in Hida, Japan, that neutrinos from the atmosphere change between two identities.
Meanwhile, Arthur McDonald, on Neutrino Observatory Sudbury in Ontario, it found that neutrinos coming from the Sun does not disappear on their arrival on Earth, but changed identity.
In addition to discovering the “camouflage” of the particles, experiments were able to determine that neutrinos have mass, a fact that contradicted the Standard Model of particle physics, which sought to explain how matter works.
Recipients . Takaaki Kajita born in 1959 in Higashimatsuyama, Japan, and received his doctorate in 1986 at the University of Tokyo, which is professor since 1999 and where he directs the Institute for Cosmic Ray Research. In 1998 his team discovered atmospheric muon neutrino deficit, which was due to neutrino oscillations.
Arthur B. McDonald, born in 1943 in Sydney, Canada, received his doctorate in 1969 at the Institute of California Technology in Pasadena, US, and is currently professor emeritus at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada.
In 1989 he served as professor of physics at Queen’s Kingtson University and directed the Observatory Sudbury Neutrino.
What are neutrinos? Eric Vasquez, a researcher at the Institute of Physics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico and collaborator SNOLAB laboratory where Arthur McDonald also collaborates, said “neutrinos, along with photons, are the most abundant particles in the universe.”
“For measurements over the last 50, 60 years, we know that there are these three types of neutrinos, we say ‘neutrino flavors’: electron neutrinos, muon neutrino and tau neutrino. It happens that these neutrinos can perform a type of transformation oscillations. What happens is that when a neutrino which originates from a ‘taste’ for example a neutrino electron, over a certain time or distance, the neutrino can change into any of the other types of neutrinos, “said .
The researcher of the National Autonomous University of Mexico added that “the difference between these three types of neutrinos is the way in which they interact with matter. When an electron neutrino interacts with would kill, what occurs is an electron, when you do a neutrino muon muon occurs and when you do a tau neutrino one tau occurs “.
Eric Vazquez is involved in two projects SNOLAB, one of them is the SNO + experiment, then the SNO experiment, for which he was given the Nobel prize for Canadian scientist. “In that experiment in which we are trying to measure the mass of neutrinos.”
“I’ll take care of making models of detectors to study the signals observed. To what do we call simulations in which we use packages to model how particles interact in the detectors. I also work collecting data remotely operating the detectors and also as a member of committees such as a committee to approve radioactive sources for calibration experiments. In the experiment also collaborated with Arthur McDonald is the DEAP “.
The discovery of the Nobel Prize in Physics” help to know that in the universe there is more matter than antimatter, all models we know tells us that in the beginning in the Big Bang, the same amount of matter and antimatter were created, so right now there should be no more matter than antimatter. Study neutrinos could give us the answer to why there is more matter, “said the researcher at UNAM.
The Nobel Prize in Physics is equipped with eight million kroner, about $ 950,000, and will be Scientists presented to the winners on Thursday December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death.
Last year, the Nobel Prize in Physics was for Japanese Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura, who worked on the development of LED lights, which allow illumination with low power consumption.
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