Tag Archives: neutrinos

ARPICO November 13, 2018 event in Vancouver (Canada): The Mysterious Dark-Side of the Universe: From Quarks to the Big Bang with Dark Matter

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The Society of Italian Researchers and Professionals in Western Canada (ARPICO) is hosting a physics event for those of us who don’t have Phd’s in physics. From an October 24, 2018 ARPICO announcement (received via email),

The second event of ARPICO’s fall 2018 activity will take place on Tuesday, November 13th, 2018 at the Roundhouse Community Centre (Room B). Our speaker will be Dr. Pietro Giampa, a physicist who recently joined the ranks of the TRIUMF laboratories [Canada’s particle accelerator centre and, formerly, Canada’s National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics] here in Vancouver. Dr. Giampa will give us an intriguing and, importantly, layperson-intelligible overview on the state of our knowledge of the universe especially in regards to so-called dark matter, a chapter of physics that the most complete theoretical model to-date cannot explain. We will learn, among other things, about an ambitious experiment (set up in a Canadian mine!) [emphasis mine] to detect neutrinos, fundamental and very elusive particles of our  cosmos. You can read a summary of Pietro Giampa’s lecture as well as his short professional biography below.

We look forward to seeing everyone there.

The evening agenda is as follows:

  • 6:30 pm – Doors Open for Registration
  • 7:00 pm – Start of the evening event with introductions & lecture by Dr. Pietro Giampa
  • ~8:15 pm – Q & A Period
  • to follow – Mingling & Refreshments until about 9:30 pm

If you have not already done so, please register for the event by visiting the EventBrite link or RSVPing to info@arpico.ca.

Further details are also available at arpico.ca and Eventbrite.

More details from the email announcement,

The Mysterious Dark-Side of the Universe: From Quarks to the Big Bang with Dark Matter

Understanding the true nature of our universe is one of the most fundamental quests of our society. The path of knowledge acquisition in that quest has led us to the hypothesis of “dark matter”, that is, a large proportion of the mass of the universe which appears invisible. In this lecture, with minimal technical language we will journey through the structure and evolution of the universe, from subatomic particles to the big bang, which gave rise to our universe, in an ultimate research to describe the dark side of the universe called dark matter. We will review what we have learnt thus far about dark matter, and get an in-depth look at how scientists are searching for something that can not be seen.

Dr. Pietro Giampa originally completed his undergraduate in physics at Royal Holloway University of London in the UK, where he wrote a thesis on SuperSymmetry Searches with the ATLAS Detector (so LHC related). Following his undergraduate, he completed a Master Degree in particle physics at the same institute where he developed a novel technique for directional detection of neutrons. It was after his master that he moved to Canada to complete his Ph.D at Queen’s University in Particle Astrophysics, working on the DEAP-3600 Experiment with Nobel laureate Prof. Arthur McDonald. In the summer of 2017 he moved to TRIUMF, where he is currently the Otto Hausser Fellow. At TRIUMF he continues his research for new forms of physics, by studying Dark Matter and Ultra-Cold Neutrons.

 

WHEN: Tuesday, November 13th, 2018 at 7:00pm (doors open at 6:30pm)

WHERE: Roundhouse Community Centre, Room B – 181 Roundhouse Mews, Vancouver, BC, V6Z 2W3

RSVP: Please RSVP at EventBrite (https://mysteryofdarkmatter.eventbrite.ca/) or email info@arpico.ca

Tickets are Needed

  • Tickets are FREE, but all individuals are requested to obtain “free-admission” tickets on EventBrite site due to limited seating at the venue. Organizers need accurate registration numbers to manage wait lists and prepare name tags.
  • All ARPICO events are 100% staffed by volunteer organizers and helpers, however, room rental, stationery, and guest refreshments are costs incurred and underwritten by members of ARPICO. Therefore to be fair, all audience participants are asked to donate to the best of their ability at the door or via EventBrite to “help” defray costs of the event.

FAQs

  • Where can I contact the organizer with any questions? info@arpico.ca
  • Do I have to bring my printed ticket to the event? No, you do not. Your name will be on our Registration List at the Check-in Desk.
  • Is my registration/ticket transferrable? If you are unable to attend, another person may use your ticket. Please send us an email at info@arpico.ca of this substitution to correct our audience Registration List and to prepare guest name tags.
  • Can I update my registration information? Yes. If you have any questions, contact us at info@arpico.ca
  • I am having trouble using EventBrite and cannot reserve my ticket(s). Can someone at ARPICO help me with my ticket reservation? Of course, simply send your ticket request to us at info@arpico.ca so we help you.

What are my transport/parking options?

  • Bus/Train: The Canada Line Yaletown Skytrain station is a 1 minute walk from the Roundhouse Community Centre.
  • Parking: Pay Parking is underground at the community centre.  Access is available via Drake Street.

With regard to the Canadian mine and neutrino experiments, I hunted down a little more information (from an October 6, 2015 article by Kate Allen for thestar.com), Note: A link has been removed,

Canadian physicist Arthur B. McDonald has won the Nobel Prize for discoveries about the behaviour of a mysterious solar particle, teased from an experiment buried two kilometres below Sudbury [Ontario].

The Queen’s University professor emeritus was honoured for co-discovering that elusive particles known as neutrinos can change their identity — or “oscillate” — as they travel from the sun. It proved that neutrinos must have mass, a finding that upset the Standard Model of particle physics and opened new avenues for research into the fundamental properties of the universe.

McDonald, 72, shares the prize with Takaaki Kajita, whose Japanese collaboration made the same discovery with slightly different methods.

To measure solar neutrinos, McDonald and a 130-person international team built a massive detector in an operational copper mine southwest of Sudbury. …

…

To solve this problem, McDonald and his colleagues dreamt up SNO. Deep in an INCO mine (now owned by Vale), protected from cosmic radiation constantly bombarding the earth’s surface, the scientists installed a 12-metre-wide acrylic vessel filled with 1,000 tonnes of ultra-pure heavy water. The vessel was surrounded by a geodesic sphere equipped with 9,456 light sensors. The whole thing was sunk in a 34-metre-high cavity filled with regular water.

When neutrinos hit the heavy water, an event that occurred about 10 times a day, they emitted a flash of light, which researchers could analyze to measure the particles’ properties.

…

Allen’s article has more details for anyone who might want to read up on neutrinos. Regardless, I’m sure Dr.Giampa is fully prepared to guide the uninitiated into the mysteries of the universe as they pertain to dark matter, neutrinos, and ultra-cold neutrons.

Surprise! Surprise! 50th anniversary for TRIUMF (Canada’s National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics) and HR MacMillan Space Centre in Vancouver, Canada

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I guess they wanted to keep it a secret? In any event, TRIUMF’s 2018 year of celebrating their 50th anniversary is almost over. Their celebratory website, TRIUMF50 lists two events (scroll down to see them) for October 2018 and nothing after that. One event is in Ottawa (which is titled ‘#DiscoverTHIS: TRIUMF, Science, and Society’ on the TRIUMF50 website) and the other in Vancouver (Canada). Then, there’s the the other 50th sciencish anniversary in Vancouver, this being celebrated by the HR MacMillan Space Centre.

TRIUMF’s two events

Weirdly, I found out about TRIUMF’s 50th anniversary after reading an October 1, 2018 Ingenium (formerly Canada Science and Technology Museums Corporation) news release (received via email) and digging further. First, the announcement about the Ottawa event,

#DISCOVERTHIS: […] THE MOTHER OF INVENTION […] CANADA SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY MUSEUM
October 3, 2018
Time: 7:30 p.m. – 9 p.m. (Doors open at 7 p.m.)
FEE: FREE (REGISTRATION REQUIRED)
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH ONLY
On October 3, join a team of experts from TRIUMF […], Canada’s particle accelerator centre, for an illuminating discussion. The event will take place at the museum, and will also include a screening of a short documentary that explores the possibility for TRIUMF to take up the reins as the world’s largest producer of actinium-225 (Ac-225), a radioisotope with promising potential as an anti-cancer therapy.

They have a more engaging and informative description on their event registration page,

#discoverTHIS: The Mother of Invention

by TRIUMF

Free

Actions and Detail Panel

Event Information

Description

Doors open 7:00pm

Programming begins in the Auditorium 7:30pm

Q+A to follow

If the adage is true that necessity is the mother of invention, then curiosity-driven research is the grandmother of the whole shebang. The internet, the cellphone, the PET scanner – or even further back – radio, penicillin, electricity: all these inventions and their impacts on our lives were made possible because of innovative people looking at scientific discoveries and asking, “What problem can I solve with this?”

How exactly does a scientist’s eureka moment turn into the internet, the satellite, the next generation of cancer therapy? Join a team of experts from TRIUMF, Canada’s particle accelerator centre, for an illuminating discussion that sheds light on the journey from our research to you.

The event will include a screening of “The Rarest Drug on Earth,” a short documentary that explores the possibility for TRIUMF to take up the reins as the world’s largest producer of actinium-225 (Ac-225), a radioisotope with promising potential as an anti-cancer therapy.

Hosted by science journalist Tim Lougheed, and featuring:

  • Kathryn Hayashi: President & CEO, TRIUMF Innovations
  • Morgan Dehnel: Founder and Chief Science & Innovation Officer, D-Pace
  • Beatrice Franke: TRIUMF Research Scientist – Physical Sciences
  • Andrew Robertson: PhD Student – Life Sciences

#discoverTHIS: La mère de l’invention

On dit que la nécessité est mère de l’invention. Si ce dicton est vrai, alors la curiosité qui alimente la recherche serait, elle, grand-mère de tout le processus. L’internet, le téléphone cellulaire, la tomographie par émission de positrons ou, si on remonte encore plus loin, la radio, la pénicilline et l’électricité, toutes ces inventions, qui ont changé nos vies, auraient été impossibles sans ces personnes innovatrices qui se sont intéressées aux découvertes scientifiques et qui se sont demandé quels problèmes elles pouvaient résoudre grâce à celles-ci. Mais comment l’éclair de génie d’un chercheur donne-t-il naissance à l’internet, au satellite ou à la nouvelle génération de traitement contre le cancer?

Joignez-vous à un groupe d’experts de TRIUMF, le Centre canadien d’accélération des particules, pour une discussion éclairante qui fera la lumière sur les étapes du processus, des chercheurs jusqu’à vous.

L’événement comprendra la projection du court documentaire The Rarest Drug on Earth, qui explore la possibilité que TRIUMF devienne le plus grand producteur mondial d’actinium-225 (AC-225), un radio-isotope prometteur dans le traitement contre le cancer.

La discussion, animée par le journaliste scientifique Tim Lougheed, mettra en vedette :

  • Kathryn Hayashi : présidente et directrice générale, TRIUMF Innovations
  • Morgan Dehnel : fondateur et agent en chef de la science et de l’innovation, D-Pace
  • Beatrice Franke : chercheuse scientifique chez TRIUMF – sciences physiques
  • Andrew Robertson : doctorant – sciences de la vie

Date and Time

Wed, 3 October 2018

7:30 PM – 9:00 PM EDT

Add to Calendar

Location

Canada Science and Technology Museum

1867 Saint Laurent Boulevard

Ottawa, ON K1G 5A3

View Map

Register here.

As for the Vancouver event, it’s titled ‘Catching Ghosts: Using Neutrinos to Unveil the Universe‘ and will be held at Science World at Telus World of Science (everyone calls it Science World) on October 23, 2018,

Catching Ghosts: Using Neutrinos to Unveil the Universe

On a clear night, away from the bright lights of Vancouver, you can see the incredible expanse of the universe before you. To study these far-away celestial bodies, scientists use a “radiation toolkit” to observe our universe and understand how the galaxies we see today came to be. Some types of radiation, such as infrared radiation, can sense stars in their infancy, not yet hot enough to shine visible light. Others, like x-rays and gamma rays, can reveal matter being sucked into a black hole.

When it comes to studying the nuclear processes in the heart of stars, scientists must turn to neutrinos: subatomic particles that are currently flying unbeknownst through your body by the billions, right this second. These elusive little particles are an excellent probe into the core of the sun and distant supernovae, but they are notoriously difficult to detect. Difficult, but not impossible.

On Tuesday, October 23, join Dr. Stanley Yen, TRIUMF Research Scientist, for his talk, Detecting the Ghost Particles of the Universe.

Date: October 23, 2018
Doors open at 6:30pm
Lecture begins at 7:00pm

Register

This lecture is presented in partnership by TRIUMF and Science World as part of the TRIUMF 50th Anniversary Unveiling the Universe Lecture Series.

Some may have noticed that I’m still referring to TRIUMF as Canada’s National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics. I know it has changed but I prefer it to the latest one, TRIUMF (Canada’s particle accelerator centre).

HR MacMillan Space Centre’s 50th anniversary

The centre has two upcoming celebratory events, here’s more from the ‘Life in the Universe’ event page,

Life in the Universe
An evening of music and astronomy

Join the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre in celebrating their 50th anniversary with a very special evening of music under the cosmic visuals of the Planetarium Star Theatre. Composer Thomas Beckman will be premiering an original work “Life in the Universe” inspired by the unique character of the planets in our solar system and the wonders of our Universe. The suite will be performed by Thomas Beckman and the Borealis String Quartet.

Thomas Beckman, CMC  [Canadian Music Centre] associate composer, has written for a wide range of ensembles that include the Borealis String Quartet, the Vancouver Symphony orchestra, the Prince George Symphony orchestra, the Postmodern Camerata and the Vancouver Youth Choir. For the past several years he has served as Festival Composer for the Artists for Conservation organization, as the in-house-composer for the Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network and as a freelance film composer for several award-winning independent documentaries. With an MMus in western classical performance from the University of British Columbia, Thomas also serves as principal violist of the Vancouver Pops Symphony and the Prince George Symphony orchestra, and performs solo with his looping project for a number of events held by the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre, Semperviva Yoga studios, and the Vancouver Maritime Museum. Thomas’ latest project has been to create the Jean Coulthard Music Video series in collaboration with the Canadian Music Centre as a means to empower local composers in BC.

The Borealis Quartet was founded in Vancouver, British Columbia in the fall of 2000 and rapidly establishing a stellar reputation. The Borealis has toured extensively in North America, Europe and Asia and performed to enthusiastic sold-out audiences in major cities, including New York, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Rome, Mainz, Shanghai, Taipei, Beijing, Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and, of course, in their home town of Vancouver. http://www.borealisstringquartet.com/ 

TICKETS: $35 early bird tickets until October 5th, $40 after.
Tickets available online through Eventbrite until 12:00pm on October 19th.

Tickets available for 7:30pm and 9:00pm shows.

Beer and wine will be available for purchase.

This is a 19+ event. All attendees will be required to provide photo ID upon entry.

Get tickets here.

Their second event is more family-oriented (from the 50th Anniversary Celebration Weekend event page),

We’re turning 50 – help us celebrate! Bring the entire family out and enjoy our programming and special activities on Saturday and Sunday. Discover more about our past 50 years of science and space education as we pull some gems from our archives and explore how producing shows in the planetarium has changed over the decades. Share your memories of the Space Centre on our memory wall and create a card for Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques as he prepares for his mission to the International Space Station in December. We’ll be testing your knowledge with trivia questions before each show in the Planetarium Star Theatre and we’ll have a birthday treat for all to eat.

$5 for general admission and children under 5 are free.

We will be open from 10:00am – 5:00pm on Saturday and Sunday for the celebration with activities running from 10:30am – 4:30pm.

Event Details

October 20, 2018 – 10:00am to October 21, 2018 – 5:00pm

1968 seems to have been quite the sciencish year in Vancouver.

One last anniversary and this is a national one, the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC) is celebrating its sesquicentennial (150th) in 2018 just one year after the country’s sesquicentennial in 2017. First mentioned here in a July 2, 2018 posting about celebratory events in Toronto, There don’t seem to be any more events planned for this year but RASC’s 150th Anniversary webpage lists resources such as podcasts and more for you delectation.

Proposed nanodevice made possible by particle that is its own antiparticle (Majorana particle)

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I’m not sure how much the mystery of Ettore Majorana’s disappearance in 1938 has to do with the latest research from Brazil on Majorana particles but it’s definitely fascinating,. From an April 6, 2018 news item on ScienceDaily,

In March 1938, the young Italian physicist Ettore Majorana disappeared mysteriously, leaving his country’s scientific community shaken. The episode remains unexplained, despite Leonardo Scascia’s attempt to unravel the enigma in his book The Disappearance of Majorana (1975).

Majorana, whom Enrico Fermi called a genius of Isaac Newton’s stature, vanished a year after making his main contribution to science. In 1937, when he was only 30, Majorana hypothesized a particle that is its own anti-particle and suggested that it might be the neutrino, whose existence had recently been predicted by Fermi and Wolfgang Pauli.

Eight decades later, Majorana fermions, or simply majoranas, are among the objects most studied by physicists. In addition to neutrinos — whose nature, whether or not they are majoranas, is one of the investigative goals of the mega-experiment Dune — another class not of fundamental particles but of quasi-particles or apparent particles has been investigated in the field of condensed matter. These Majorana quasi-particles can emerge as excitations in topological superconductors.

An April 6, 2018 Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) press release on EurekAlert, which originated the news item,  reveals more about the Brazilian research (Note: Links have been removed),

A new study by PhD student Luciano Henrique Siliano Ricco with a scholarship from the São Paulo Research Foundation – FAPESP, in collaboration with his supervisor Antonio Carlos Ferreira Seridonio and others, was conducted on the Ilha Solteira campus of São Paulo State University (UNESP) in Brazil and described in an article in Scientific Reports.

“We propose a theoretical device that acts as a thermoelectric tuner – a tuner of heat and charge – assisted by Majorana fermions,” Seridonio said.

The device consists of a quantum dot (QD), represented in the Figure A by the symbol ε1. QDs are often called “artificial atoms.” In this case, the QD is located between two metallic leads at different temperatures.

The temperature difference is fundamental to allowing thermal energy to flow across the QD. A quasi-one-dimensional superconducting wire – called a Kitaev wire after its proponent, Russian physicist Alexei Kitaev, currently a professor at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in the US – is connected to the QD.

In this study, the Kitaev wire was ring- or U-shaped and had two majoranas (η1 and η2) at its edges. The majoranas emerge as excitations characterized by zero-energy modes.

“When the QD is coupled to only one side of the wire, the system behaves resonantly with regard to electrical and thermal conductance. In other words, it behaves like a thermoelectric filter,” said the principal investigator for the FAPESP fellowship.

“I should stress that this behavior as a filter for thermal and electrical energy occurs when the two majoranas ‘see’ each other via the wire, but only one of them ‘sees’ the QD in the connection.”

Another possibility investigated by the researchers involved making the QD “see” the two majoranas at the same time by connecting it to both ends of the Kitaev wire.

“By making the QD ‘see’ more of η1 or η2, i.e., by varying the system’s asymmetry, we can use the artificial atom as a tuner, where the thermal or electrical energy that flows through it is redshifted or blueshifted,” Seridonio said (see Figure B for illustrative explanation).

This theoretical paper, he added, is expected to contribute to the development of thermoelectric devices based on Majorana fermions.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Tuning of heat and charge transport by Majorana fermions by L. S. Ricco, F. A. Dessotti, I. A. Shelykh, M. S. Figueira & A. C. Seridonio. Scientific Reportsvolume 8, Article number: 2790 (2018) doi:10.1038/s41598-018-21180-9 Published online: 12 February 2018

This paper is open access.

As I prepared to publish this piece I stumbled across a sad Sept. 3, 2018 article about Brazil and its overnight loss of heritage in a fire by Henry Grabar for slate.com (Note: Links have been removed),

On Sunday night, a fire ripped through Brazil’s National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, destroying the country’s most valuable storehouse of natural and anthropological history within hours.

Most of the 20 million items housed inside—including the skull of Luzia, the oldest human remains ever found in the Americas; one of the world’s largest archives of South America’s indigenous cultures; more than 26,000 fossils, 55,000 stuffed birds, and 5 million insect specimens; and a library of more than 500,000 books—are thought to have been destroyed.

…

The loss is a symptom of a larger problem as Grabar notes in his article.

MinutePhysics science videos

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You never know where you’re going to get your next link to a science video. I found a reference to MinutePhysics science videos on a tweet from Michael Ausiello (editor of TVLine) about one of his publication’s articles. From the Dec. 22, 2011 article by Sheryl Rothmuller for TVLine,

Minute Physics Henry Reich’s weekly series serves up science in an easy-to-digest format that leaves you counting the days until the next episode is unleashed. Simple cartoon drawings and clear narration is the recipe for this informative (and fun!) webseries. In the latest installment, learn why neutrinos are the “vampires of physics.” Way better than watching the latest Twilight trailer for the 15th time.

Here’s the neutrino episode,

You can find the other 25 episodes here.