Who is Takaaki Kajita?

• Takaaki Kajita is a Japanese physicist who was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering the oscillations of neutrinos from one flavour to another, which proved that those subatomic particles have mass.
• He shared the prize with Canadian physicist Arthur B. McDonald.16 May 2024

• Iron Calorimeter (ICAL) Detector, designed to probe Earth matter effects on neutrino propagation and determine neutrino oscillation parameters.
• 50,000 tonnes, the world’s largest magnet, four times larger than CERN’s CMS detector magnet

• Neutrino Oscillation Parameters: Unambiguous and precise determination using atmospheric neutrinos.
• Matter Effects: Study through electric charge identification to determine the sign of mass differences.
• CP Violation: Investigate charge-conjugation and parity violations in the leptonic sector.
• CPT Violation: Possible studies of charge-conjugation, parity, and time-reversal violations.
• Kolar Events: Study possible identification of very-high-energy neutrinos and multi-muon events in Kolar Gold Fields.

PYQ:

[2010] India-based Neutrino Observatory is included by the planning commission as a mega-science project under the 11th Five-year plan. In this context, consider the following statements:

1. Neutrinos are chargeless elementary particles that travel close to the speed of light.
2. Neutrinos are created in nuclear reactions of beta decay.
3. Neutrinos have a negligible, but non-zero mass.
4. Trillions of Neutrinos pass through the human body every second.

Which of the statements given above are correct?

(a) 1 and 3 only

(b) 1, 2 and 3 only

(c) 2, 3 and 4

(d) 1, 2, 3 and 4