University of Minnesota
School of Physics & Astronomy

Physics and Astronomy Calendar

Thursday, September 29th 2016
3:35 pm:
Speaker: Greg Pawloski
Subject: Looking at the weird building blocks of the universe with the NOvA detectors

Neutrinos are the odd balls of the elementary particle menagerie that
forms the building blocks of the universe. Because of their odd
properties they can potentially be involved in interesting processes
that are responsible for our universe not annihilating itself. There
is currently great interest in the particle physics community to study
the properties of these particles. However, because of their odd
nature, their detection is challenging and extraordinary detectors are
needed to study them. In this talk, we will look at the role of the
NOvA detectors (the world’s largest plastic structures) in studying
the properties of neutrinos by shooting a beam of neutrinos through
the Earth from Illinois to northern Minnesota.
