Our universe is dominated by matter and contains hardly any antimatter, a notion which still perplexes top scientists researching at聽. The Big Bang created聽, but now nearly everything鈥攕olid, liquid, gas or plasma鈥攊s made of matter. It鈥檚 like the universe flipped a two-sided coin and got heads 99.99% of the time.
This fundamental question around the matter-antimatter asymmetry drives the years long work recently honored with the聽聽and represents humanity’s quest to understand the most fundamental laws of nature and the basic concept of existence.
University physicists鈥攔epresenting the as part of the international 鈥攔eceived this prestigious recognition for their contributions toward understanding the confounding asymmetry between matter and antimatter. Distinguished professor聽, professor聽, research assistant professor聽, associate professor聽, assistant professor聽聽and professor聽聽are among those exploring why our universe is composed almost entirely of matter.
The $3 million prize awarded by the聽聽acknowledges the groundbreaking work in measuring Higgs boson properties, discovering new strongly interacting particles and investigating rare processes at the root of this cosmic imbalance. The Higgs boson is a particle discovered in 2012 that proves the existence of the Higgs field, which acts like cosmic molasses giving mass to fundamental particles as they move through it. This particle completes the Standard Model of elementary particles and their interactions, which is a powerful theory that explains a vast body of data accumulated over the last few decades of particle physics.
The prize recognizes the four detectors operating at the Large Hadron Collider, Alice, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb, and was split equally amongst the four collaborations. The LHCb experiment’s sophisticated 5600-tonne detector, located 100 meters underground near Geneva, Switzerland, captures data from particles created when protons collide at nearly light speed and focuses on the exploration of phenomena that may explain the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe.
Vincenzo Vagnoni, spokesperson for the 1500-scientist collaboration, accepted the prize on the LHCb team’s behalf, together with the spokespersons of the three other experiments. The moment marked a rare departure from the usual laboratory setting, as the spokespersons traded their typical scientific attire for formal evening wear at the ceremony, bringing a touch of Hollywood glamour to the recognition of groundbreaking physics research. The $500,000 award is being donated to support doctoral students conducting research at CERN.
