Nobel Prize in Physics for symmetry breakdown

From News at Nature - Most Recent:

A trio of Japanese-born physicists has been awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on understanding how the fundamental symmetries of nature are broken. Makoto Kobayashi of Japan's High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) in Tsukuba and Toshihide Maskawa of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics (YITP) at Kyoto University were awarded a quarter of the prize each for discovering the origin of the 'broken symmetry' that contributed to a preponderance of matter over antimatter in the Universe. The other half went to Yoichiro Nambu of the University of Chicago in Illinois, who showed that the concept of spontaneous broken symmetry can explain the variety of particles and forces seen in the quantum world1. "I am very glad that I have received the prize," Kobayashi said by telephone to a gathering of reporters in Stockholm, where the prize announcement was made.

Read the whole article