Understanding the Universe from Deep Underground

by Prof. Arthur B. McDonald (Queen’s University, Kingston (Ontario, Canada))

Tuesday 19 Mar 2019, 17:00 → 18:00 Europe/Rome

Rectorate/Building-Auditorium (GSSI)

Abstract: By going deep underground and creating ultra-clean detectors it is possible to address some very fundamental questions about our Universe: How does the Sun burn? What are the dark matter particles making up 26% of our Universe? What are the properties of neutrinos, elusive particles that are one of the fundamental building blocks of nature? How do these particles influence how our Universe evolves? With the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) we went 2 km underground to observe new properties of neutrinos that are beyond the Standard Model of Elementary Particles and also confirm that the models of how the Sun burns are very
accurate. Through the Global Argon Dark Matter Collaboration, involving the Gran Sasso (Italy), SNOLAB (Canada) and CANFRANC (Spain) underground laboratories and more than 350 international scientists, we hope to push the sensitivity for detecting Dark Matter particles by more than a factor of 100 and perhaps observe a whole new type of matter. All of these topics will be included in a lecture for a general scientific audience.