Physics SPS Seminar Series
DATE: FRIDAY, MARCH 30, 2012
TIME: 1:30 PM
PLACE: MONROE HALL ROOM #127
Speaker: Dr. Tim Shokair, University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, PA.
"Neutrinos and Antineutrinos at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory"
Neutrinos are the weakly interacting, fundamental particles proposed as
the solution to the energy-momentum conservation problem in nuclear beta
decay. In the 1950's experimental physicists were first able to detect
antineutrinos coming from reactors, and later in the late 60's and 70's
the first solar neutrinos were detected. The detection of solar
neutrinos showed a discrepancy between the number of neutrinos predicted
by Standard Solar Model and the number of neutrinos measured. This
discrepancy, known as the Solar Neutrino Problem, remained unsolved
until 2002 when the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) was able to show
that neutrinos change from one type to another.