One Japanese and two American researchers won the Nobel Prize in Physics today for ‘‘pioneering contributions to astrophysics,’’. Raymond Davis Jr., 87, from the University of Pennsylvania and Masatoshi Koshiba, 76, from the University of Tokyo will share half the prize, worth 10 million kronor, for their research into cosmic neutrinos, and cosmic X-ray sources. Riccardo Giacconi, 71, of the Associated Universities Inc. in Washington DC will get the other half for his construction of instruments needed to investigate cosmic X-ray radiation, which is absorbed in the earth’s atmosphere. The laureates used the ‘‘very smallest components of the universe to increase our understanding of the very largest,’’ including the sun, stars, galaxies and supernovae, the Royal Swedish academy of Sciences said. This year’s Nobel winners have ‘‘opened new windows to space,’’ Mats Jonsson, chairman of the Nobel committee of Physics said. Last year, the physics award went to three scientists for the discovery of the Bose-Einstein condensate in 1995 - the coldest piece of material to date. Americans, Eric.A.Cornell and Carl.E.Wieman, and German scientist Wolfgang Ketterle created a new state of matter - an ultra-cold gas that could help scientists develop smaller and faster electronics by depositing a stream of atoms on computer circuit boards. ‘‘We are no closer to achieving the result (of fastcircuit boards). It could take years,” cornell said yesterday.
