IoP lecture: Neutrino - Is the Sun Still Shining?
- When?
- Wednesday 20 October 2010, 19.00
- Where?
- Lecture Theatre M, University of Surrey
- Open to:
- Staff, Students, Public
- Speaker:
- Frank Close, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
- Admission price:
- Free
This is the story of Ray Davis who was the first man to look into the heart of a star. He did so by capturing neutrino, ghostly particles that are produced in the centre of the Sun and stream out across space. As you read this, billions of them are hurtling through your eyeballs at almost the speed of light, unseen.
Neutrinos are as near to nothing as anything we know and so elusive that they are almost invisible. Yet with clever technology we can now take pictures of the Sun in neutrino light. When he started most thought it would be impossible. It nearly turned out to be. 40 years would pass before he was proved right, leading to his Nobel Prize in 2002 aged 87. Longevity is a asset in the neutrino business; not everyone would be so lucky. The real genius behind our modern understanding of the neutrino missed out on three Nobel Prizes - because he fled the UK to the Soviet Union, and didn't survive to see his theories proved. Neutrinos are the shyest and most mysterious particles in the universe, and we are beginning to suspect that the humble neutrino may hold the secret to the disappearance of antimatter in the universe.
The talk will introduce the people, show images left by neutrinos, and introduce a new science: neutrino astronomy.