Nobel Prize in Physics awarded for the study of broken symmetry

The 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to researchers who conducted groundbreaking work in the understanding of symmetry breaking in particle physics. As in the case of chemistry, three scientists will receive the award: Makoto Kobayashi and Tosihide Maskawa will receive every quarter of a prize of $ 1.3 million for their theoretical study of the origin of the broken symmetry .

The remaining half of the monetary reward will go to Yoichiro Nambu for his work on the disclosure of a mechanism in subatomic physics, where there is a spontaneous symmetry breaking.

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 US-Chinese scientists - a year later they received the Nobel Prize for their research. In the mid-1960s, another group of scientists discovered that the 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 precisely explain why symmetry violations occur in the universe, and moreover, this discovery threatened the standard model of the universe. In 1972, at Kyoto University, two already mentioned scientists: Makoto Kobayashi and Tosikhida Maskawa came to the conclusion that in order to explain the phenomenon of double broken symmetry, it is required to open a new family of quarks. It took 22 years to find them: in 1974 the “wandering” quark was opened, in 1977 the “lower” quark, and finally in 1994 the “upper” quark.
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In order to lay the 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 is increased - thanks in large part to the Large Hadron Collider.