Nobel Prize in Physics awarded for the study of broken symmetry

The 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to researchers who pioneered work in the field of understanding symmetry breaking in elementary particle physics. As in the case of chemistry, three scientists will receive the prize: Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa will receive each quarter a prize of $ 1.3 million for their theoretical study of the origin of broken symmetry (thanks to this work, we now know about the existence of “wandering, upper and lower” quarks) .

The remaining half of the cash reward will go to Yoichiro Nambu for his work on revealing the mechanism in subatomic physics, where spontaneous symmetry breaking is observed.

The history of symmetry breaking in physics originates in 1956, when the well-established postulate that the amount of matter in the universe is equal to the amount of antimatter was refuted by a group of American-Chinese scientists - a year later they received the Nobel Prize for their research. In the mid-60s, another group of scientists discovered that a particle known as Kaon breaks two types of symmetry after reactive decay, but it took several more years to prove this - the Nobel Prize for discovery was awarded only in 1980. But even then no one could explain exactly why symmetry breaking in the universe, moreover, this discovery threatened the standard model of the universe. In 1972, at Kyoto University, the two scientists already mentioned: Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa, concluded that to explain the phenomenon of double broken symmetry, it is necessary to open a new family of quarks. It took 22 years to find them: in 1974 a “wandering” quark was discovered, in 1977 a “lower” quark, and finally in 1994 an “upper” quark.

In order to lay a new foundation for a significant part of our understanding of the universe, the Nobel Committee recognized the merits of these three men at a time when interest in subatomic physics was increased - largely thanks to the Large Hadron Collider.