Unveiling the secrets of the Universe with neutrinos & gravitational waves
Unveiling the secrets of the Universe with neutrinos & gravitational waves
LK200
Date: Tuesday 25 June 2024
Time: 18:00 - 20:00
Venue: Sir Charles Wilson Theatre
Category: Public lectures
Speaker: Professor Takaaki Kajita
Website: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/895352041057?aff=oddtdtcreator
As part of the celebration in honour of the 200th anniversaru of William Thomson, the later Lord Kelvin, Nobel Laureate Professor Takaaki Kajita will give a talk on measuring neutrinos and gravitational waves honouring the tradition of Lord Kelvin who developed scientific instruments for high precision measurements.
This public lecture is supported by the Institute of Physics and the Institute of Physics Scotland.
Abstract
Neutrinos are one of the fundamental subatomic particles. It has been assumed that neutrinos have no mass. However, it was predicted more than 50 years ago that, if neutrinos have mass, they will change their type (flavor) while propagating in the vacuum or in a medium. This phenomenon is called neutrino oscillations. Neutrino oscillations were discovered in 1998 and they are very important to understand the secrets of the Universe. In particular, neutrinos with very small mass may be the key for understanding the origin of matter in the Universe. Gravitational waves are generated by the violent motion of heavy masses. Therefore, gravitational waves are expected to be a very important new means for observing the Universe, such as binary blackhole mergers or binary neutron star mergers. In this talk, I will discuss experimental studies of neutrinos and gravitational waves and what they may say about the Universe we live in.