The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday to Japanese scientist Takaaki Kajita and Canadian scientist Arthur B. McDonald for their work on neutrinos, noted the Nobel Prize's website.
Currently, McDonald, 72, is a professor emeritus at Queen's University in Kingston, Canada, and Kajita, 56, is a professor at the University of Tokyo and director of the Institute for Cosmic Ray Research. The two scientists received a shared $960,000 grant for their achievement.
The word neutrino is Italian for "small neutral one." A neutrino is a subatomic particle that carries no electric charge and is abundantly found in the universe. Besides photons, which carry light, neutrinos are the second most numerous subatomic particles in the cosmos, reported The New York Times.
The Nobel Prize's website stated that since the 1930s, physicists have predicted the existence of the neutrino, but could not proved it. Called "the neutrino puzzle," physicists wrestled with the mystery of where two-thirds of all existing neutrinos disappear to.
Physicists created the minuscule neutrino particles in nuclear reactions, similar to those that occur in the sun, in the stars, or in nuclear power plants, the Associated Press noted. Through experiments, three kinds of neutrinos were discovered to switch identities when traveling through the atmosphere to two-thirds of a mile below the Earth's surface, reported The New York Times.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences stated that "the discovery has changed our understanding of the innermost workings of matter and can prove crucial to our view of the universe."
On Monday the Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded to three scientists from the U.S., China, and Japan for discovering drugs used to fight malaria and other tropical diseases.
Expect more Nobel Prize announcements on Wednesday for chemistry, on Thursday for literature, and on economics next Monday.
