28.06.2017; Vortragsreihe
Arthur B. McDonald: A Deeper Understanding of our Universe from 2 km Underground
01069 Dresden
The Canadian particle physicist Arthur B. McDonald was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 2015 together with Takaaki Kajita from Japan. Both researchers succeeded in proving that neutrinos have mass, a fact contradictory to the Standard Model of Elementary Particle Physics. Neutrinos are the most frequent elementary particles in our universe apart from photons. They pass in billions per second through our body without causing any interaction. Arthur McDonald and his team at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO), an experimental facility in a mine in Canada in 2001, studied neutrinos created in nuclear reactions in the sun. Measurements showed that some neutrinos had been switching their types during their way to earth. This phenomenon is called neutrino oscillation. There are three types of neutrinos: electron -, muon – and tau neutrinos. Demonstrating that the particles can switch between these types, the researches proved that neutrinos have mass, though may it be very small. The SNO team, to which Prof. Kai Zuber from TU Dresden belongs for more than 15 years already, succeeded in a break-through in neutrino research and in our understanding of the universe.