October 7, 2008

Google Logo Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm

Nobel Prize in Physics

Japan's Makato Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa share the Nobel Prize with American Yoichiro Nambu for work related to a fundamental description of nature at the subatomic particle level through what is known as broken symmetries. Steve Mirsky reports

Illustration of a Bohr atom model spinning around the words Science Quickly with various science and medicine related icons around the text

Join Our Community of Science Lovers!

[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]

The 2008 Nobel Prize in physics goes to an American and two Japanese scientists for work related to symmetry.

In the early 1960s, Yoichiro Nambu of the Enrico Fermi Institute in Chicago developed a mathematical description of what is known as spontaneous broken symmetry related to subatomic particles. The breaking of symmetry scrambles the underlying order of nature. Nambu’s work was instrumental in some unscrambling, namely the later unification of three of the four basic forces—the weak force, strong force and electromagnetism.

The other laureates are Makato Kobayashi of the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization in Tsukuba, Japan, and Toshihide Maskawa of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto. They discovered different broken symmetries in the early 1970s, which predicted the existence of three kinds of quarks, which were later discovered. Their kind of broken symmetry is at the heart of the big bang. Full symmetry would have snuffed the Big Bang, but a tiny deviation of an extra matter particle for every 10 billion matter-antimatter particle pairs is apparently what allowed the universe to come into existence.

—Steve Mirsky 

On supporting science journalism

If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.

60-Second Science is a daily podcast. Subscribe to this Podcast:

RSS | iTunes 

It’s Time to Stand Up for Science

If you enjoyed this article, I’d like to ask for your support. Scientific American has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.

I’ve been a Scientific American subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too.

If you subscribe to Scientific American, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.

In return, you get essential news, captivating podcasts, brilliant infographics, can't-miss newsletters, must-watch videos, challenging games, and the science world's best writing and reporting. You can even gift someone a subscription.

There has never been a more important time for us to stand up and show why science matters. I hope you’ll support us in that mission.

Thank you,

David M. Ewalt, Editor in Chief, Scientific American

Subscribe
Nobel Prize in Physics