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Kajita and McDonald win Nobel physics prize for work on neutrinos Takaaki Kajita and Arthur McDonald win for discovery of neutrino oscillations, which show that neutrinos have mass PRESS RELEASE NOTE (PDF) The Nobel prize in physics has been awarded to Takaaki Kajita and Arthur McDonald for discovering that elusive subatomic particles called neutrinos weigh something more than nothing. Named after the Italian for “little neutral one”, neutrinos have no electric charge and were long thought to have zero mass, but Kajita at the University of Tokyo and McDonald at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada, showed otherwise. With two separate detectors built deep underground, one a kilometre beneath a mountain in Gifu prefecture, and the other 2km down an old nickel mine in Ontario, the scientists discovered that neutrinos can flip from one form to another as they hurtle through space – a chameleon-like behaviour that proves they have mass. The Nobel committee said the d