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Takaaki Kajita Nobel Prize Commemorative Lecture Series: Where do we come from? - Beyond the Nobel Prize in Neutrinos

April 27, 2016

Date of activity: March 27, 2016

The first of a series of events commemorating the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics was hosted by the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) on March 27, 2016. The Takaaki Kajita Commemorative Lecture Series: Where do we come from? – Beyond the Nobel Prize in Neutrinos attracted more than 470 people to the Yasuda Auditorium in The University of Tokyo’s Hongo Campus, where Kavli IPMU researchers talked about the significance and subsequent impact of the Institute for Cosmic Ray Research Director and Kavli IPMU Principal Investigator’s discovery of atmospheric neutrino oscillations on our understanding of the Universe.
 
Kavli IPMU Professor Mark Vagins kicked off the event with a talk titled, “Supernovas as our mother who gave birth to the elements of nature”, going over the history of the most basic elements that make up our world. Vagins also introduced the work that went into detecting the first neutrinos from a supernova at the Kamiokande, which is predecessor of Super-Kamiokande and paved the way for Special University Professor Emeritus Masatoshi Koshiba to receive the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics.
 
Vagins explained how elements released by exploding stars were ultimately responsible for the creation of human beings, and so in a way supernovas are everyone’s ‘mother’. The talk ended with a glimpse into the future, when Vagins announced upcoming plans to inject gadolinium into the Super-Kamiokande in order to raise the detector’s sensitivity, and therefore capability of studying neutrinos from distant supernovas in greater detail.
 
Kavli IPMU Director Hitoshi Murayama spent the second half of the event giving a talk titled, “Neutrinos as our father who protected us from a complete annihilation”. He explained how Professor Kajita’s research on neutrinos was a historical milestone, helping answer a number of problems in the Standard Model that had been plaguing scientists for decades.
 
Murayama talked about the beginning of the Universe when matter and anti-matter existed. He said Japanese physicists Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa came up with a way to describe the difference in the nature between matter and anti-matter, but that this was not quite enough to explain now anti-matter has been lost.  Another pair of Japanese physicists Masataka Fukugida and Tsutomu Yanagida suggested neutrinos play a valuable role in switching around matter and anti-matter, but everyone will have to wait until more experiments are done to see the results. From this idea, Murayama said neutrinos could be referred to as the ‘father’ of mankind.

Participants enjoyed the afternoon hearing about the wonder and meaning of science. A number of comments included:
“Very interesting. I feel motivated to study harder in my science class.”
“It’s exciting to be able to hear a presentation by a scientist from overseas.”
“I understand Professor Kajita’s Nobel prize-winning research a lot better, and I also learned that high quality research is being carried out in Japan. I feel closer to the research than I did before.”
 
 

Related URL
  • Kavli IPMU Director Hitoshi Murayama gave the talk “Neutrinos as our father who protected us from a complete annihilation”
    Kavli IPMU Director Hitoshi Murayama gave the talk “Neutrinos as our father who protected us from a complete annihilation”
  • Kavli IPMU Professor Mark Vagins gave the talk
    Kavli IPMU Professor Mark Vagins gave the talk "Supernovas as our mother who gave birth to the elements of nature"
  • Lecturers in front of Yasuda Auditorium
    Lecturers in front of Yasuda Auditorium

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