Three physicists got a Nobel Prize. two were Japanese.one was American. He worked at the university of Chicago so my dad might know him(he does physics too)!
They were looking for hidden symmetries in particles. What they found was the explanation of the asymmetry CP violation. The American gets 1/2 of the prize. I wonder why? That is unfair.
-Logan
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9 comments:
Why do you think he only got half the prize if it is a 3way tie? Where were the other 2 from? Also,I'd like to see a little more detail in your blg.
Hi gang at WHSTS -
I do in fact know Yoichiro Nambu. He taught my Quantum Field Theory class. He was an elder statesman of the department even then 15 years ago.
The prize this year was awarded for two closely related achievements: 1) The discovery of the mechanism for spontaneous symmetry breaking (Nambu’s contribution), and 2) The theoretical framework by which this mechanism leads to the observed behavior of CP violation (Kobayashi-Maskawa). This is why the prize money is divided up strangely: half to Nambu for the first, the remaining half split between Kobayashi and Maskawa.
Physicists love symmetry – it is beautiful and leads to many powerful ideas. For example you do experiments all of the time and, when they are well designed, you expect the results to be repeatable. This assumption relies on physics being symmetric with respect to time. If the laws of physics depended on what time it was then the results of our experiments might be different every time we performed them. However when we look around us we see asymmetries everywhere. Nambu’s suggestion was that we could get an asymmetric world even with a symmetric starting point if the configuration was not stable. Imagine a ball balanced smack on top of a sombrero. The universe is symmetric, but we know that even the tiniest change will cause that ball to roll into the brim of the sombrero. Which spot? We can’t know. But we know that once the ball stops rolling the world will be asymmetric. Nambu gave examples of how this picture has an analogy in particle physics. This lets the physicists write their equations with perfect symmetry even though they use only one hand to do it.
The award to Kobayashi and Maskawa is harder to describe, but I have to try because I’m a very small part of the story. As I’ve said physicists love their symmetry and until the 1950’s there were three big symmetries that everyone was sure of:
C (Charge Conjugation) – The physics of particles and anti-particles are the same.
P (Parity) – Physics looks the same in a mirror.
T (Time Reversal) – Physics (at least of particles) is the same if you play time backwards.
Then nuclear decay was shown to violate P. Physicist tried to save P by tying it to C. The way that works is this :
“Ah, well sure P is violated, but not CP!”
CP – Physics of anti-particles in the mirror is the same as normal physics.
In the early 1960’s, CP was found to be violated. This is where Kobayashi and Maskawa stepped in and proposed a way that CP could be violated even though the underlying physics was symmetric. The bit part that I play in this is that until the late 1990’s there was one alternative explanation that would also explain the measured CP violation. I worked on a huge experiment called KTeV at the accelerator facility Fermilab that helped to show that the Kobayashi and Maskawa model was the correct one.
As is often true for ideas awarded the physics Nobel prize neither of these achievements are the end of the conversation. We celebrate them because they have become important supporting pieces for many other ideas to build from.
I think the american got 1/2 of the prize because, he might have done a better job than the Japanese contestents.
what is the asymmetry CP violation?
please be more precise when you say "Three physicists got a Nobel Prize. two were Japanese.one was American." and please use complete sentences. shouldn't you be glad that the american didn't only get a third of the prize?
This is unfair unless the Japanese scientists worked together. Did they?
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