The 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to three men who's work has contributed significantly to our understanding of why we're here. Makoto Kobayashi of the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization, Japan, and Toshihide Maskawa of Kyoto Sangyo University share one half of the prize, with the remaining half going to Yoichiro Nambu of the University of Chicago. Their combined body of work paves the way towards solving two of the biggest mysteries of physics: why there is no antimatter and why things have mass. The answers to both are connected to flaws in nature's symmetry.

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