University of Tokyo researcher Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald of Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada have been awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery of neutrino oscillations—proving that the electrically-neutral particles have mass.
Their experiments, members of the Nobel Prize committee said in a statement, “demonstrated that neutrinos change identities.” This metamorphosis “requires that neutrinos have mass,” they added, and the duo’s work has not only “changed our understanding of the innermost workings of matter” but could ultimately be crucial for how we see the universe.
Kajita originally presented the discovery that atmospheric neutrinos shift between two identities en route to the Super-Kamiokande detector in Japan around the turn of the century. Meanwhile, McDonald and his colleagues in Canada demonstrated that neutrinos from the sun did not vanish on their way to Earth. Instead, observatories captured them with different identities.
The discovery solved a longstanding puzzle for physicists, the Nobel committee said. As many as two-third of the neutrinos found in theoretical calculations appeared to be missing by the time measurements could be performed on the ground. Kajita’s and McDonald’s experiments revealed that the neutrinos had not disappeared after all—they had only changed form.
Based on those findings, the scientists were able to conclude that the particles, which were long believed to be massless, must possess at least a minute amount of mass—a “historic discovery,” according to the Nobel committee, because it revealed that the Standard Model of physics on its own could not adequately explain the fundamental components of the universe.
Anti-parasite researchers share Nobel Prize for medicine
On Monday, the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to the team of William C. Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura for their discovery of a new drug to treat infections caused by roundworm parasites, and to Youyou Tu for her research on a new therapy which has significantly reduced the mortality rates for malaria patients.
Campbell and Ōmura discovered a new medication known as Avermectin, which the Nobel Prize committee said led to derivatives which have drastically lowered the incidence rates of both river blindness and lymphatic filariasis, both of which are caused by parasitic worms that are prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Central and South America.
River blindness, also called Onchocerciasis, causes chronic inflammation in the cornea, which ultimately can rob patients of their sight. Lymphatic Filariasis afflicts more than 100 million men and women, causing chronic swelling. Ōmura, a microbiologist, isolated new antibacterial agents from a type of soil bacteria, and Campbell, a parasite biologist, explored their efficacy and found a component in one type that proved particularly effective against parasites in animals.
Malaria, which kills 450,000 people (mostly children) each year, is typically treated using either chloroquine or quinine, but the success rates of both therapies are falling. To find a new way to treat the ailment, Tu turned to traditional Chinese herbal remedies, ultimately finding that active compounds from the plant Artemisia annua were effective against the malaria parasite.
“These two discoveries have provided humankind with powerful new means to combat these debilitating diseases that affect hundreds of millions of people annually,” representatives of the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet said in a statement. “The consequences in terms of improved human health and reduced suffering are immeasurable.”
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