The Nobel Prize in Physics 2002

 

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2002
       
 

When you sunbathe, you also take a neutrino shower: 100,000 billion pass through your body every second. Statistically speaking, your body will stop only one of the many neutrinos which pass through it during a lifetime.

 

What makes the sun shine?
Light from the sun’s hot surface allows life to flourish on our planet. The heat is provided by fusion processes in its dense core. Atomic nuclei of hydrogen fuse together into helium nuclei. For each helium nucleus produced, energy is released together with two neutrinos.

“Through the vista-windows suns peer in at us,
looking calm of eye, although we know,
their thunderous roars amid the roentgens blasting,
their flailings in the gorge of everlasting.”

Harry Martinson, Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature 1974
– Poem 62 from ‘Aniara’, 1956
(translation by Stephen Klass and Leif Sjöberg, published by Story Line Press)

       

To cite this section
MLA style: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2002. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2024. Tue. 19 Mar 2024. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2002/9622-the-nobel-prize-in-physics-2002-2002-2/>

Back to top Back To Top Takes users back to the top of the page

Nobel Prizes and laureates

Eleven laureates were awarded a Nobel Prize in 2023, for achievements that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. Their work and discoveries range from effective mRNA vaccines and attosecond physics to fighting against the oppression of women.

See them all presented here.
Illustration

Explore prizes and laureates

Look for popular awards and laureates in different fields, and discover the history of the Nobel Prize.