Physics Nobel Prize winners attend conference at QMUL

A conference marking 50 years since the discovery of CP violation, a tiny difference between matter and antimatter that is vital for our existence, was held at Queen Mary University of London on 10-11 July. Attendees included Jim Cronin and Makoto Kobayashi, who won Nobel Prizes in Physics in 1980 and 2008, respectively. Cronin was a co-discoverer of CP violation, and Kobayashi, with his collaborator Maskawa, postulated a theory of how CP violation could be described. Commenting on the event, Makoto Kobayashi said: "I enjoyed the conference very much. Progress in the past 50 years is amazing, but CP violation is still veiled in mystery at the fundamental level. I am looking forward to future studies." CP violation describes the difference in how subatomic particles, called quarks, interact in relation to their corresponding antiquarks, which have similar properties but opposite charge. CP is a broken symmetry, a phenomenon that lies at the heart of understanding the evolution of the Universe and the behaviour of nature a fleeting moment after the Big Bang some 14 billion years ago.