RCI talk: Catch Me If You Can: Hunting the Elusive Neutrino

Sampa Bhadra, Ph.D., Department of Physics and Astronomy, York University

Neutrinos are among the most abundant particles in the universe, and omnipresent.  They are nonetheless the least understood of the fundamental particles because they rarely interact with other matter.  They played a big role in the evolution of the universe after the Big Bang.  Studying the properties of neutrinos is one of the current grand quests in physics, and we are in a period of exciting discoveries.  One such discovery is that neutrinos have a small but non-zero mass, contrary to what was believed, and this has shaken up the field.  The universe we know is made of matter ,even though matter and anti-matter were created equally after the Big Bang, and neutrinos may be the reason for this!  One way to test this is through controlled production of neutrinos at accelerators.  I will describe the T2K experiment in Japan, which has recently shed important light on a key missing ingredient in the neutrino puzzle.

Who can attend: everyone, public
Fee: free 
Reservation not needed 
Organized by: Royal Canadian Institute for Advancement of Science (RCI)
Location: Macleod Auditorium, Medical Sciences Building, University of Toronto1 King’s College Circle. Nearest Subway is Queen’s Park Station. Parking on campus, pay/display; limited disabled parking available.