Science Forum: Talk on neutrinos kicks off annual event

The second UW Science Forum colloquium kicks off tomorrow (Oct. 5) with Physics Professor Hamish Robertson discussing the newest groundbreaking research involving subatomic particles called neutrinos.

Robertson, who is with the UW’s Center for Experimental Nuclear Physics and Astrophysics, will talk about recent findings from the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, built in a mine more than a mile beneath the surface near Sudbury, Ontario. Scientists working there with a detector filled with 1,000 tons of pure heavy water and 8,000 tons of light water confirmed earlier research that indicated neutrinos have mass. The fact that these tiny particles, which carry the barest of electrical charges, have any mass at all means changes in some of the fundamentals of physics. It also takes a step in accounting for some of the so-called missing mass of the universe - mass that scientists say should exist in the wake of the Big Bang, but which so far has not been detected.

Robertson will speak at
3:30 p.m. tomorrow in A102 of the Physics-Astronomy Building. A reception will follow in the foyer.

Additional talks will be held at 3:30 p.m. in A102 Physics-Astronomy on the first Friday of each month throughout the year, except January. The schedule is:

  • Nov. 2, Dee Boersma, Zoology, Penguin Conservation Biology.

  • Dec. 7, Jody Deming, Oceanography, From Oceanography to Astrobiology: Microbial Life in Ice.

  • Feb. 1, Bernard Hallet, Earth and Space Sciences, Quaternary Research Center, topic to be determined.

  • March 1, Mary Lidstrom, Chemical Engineering and Microbiology, Metabolic Pathway Evolution.

  • April 5, Fred Rieke, Physiology and Biophysics, Seeing In the Dark: Retinal Processing and Visual Sensitivity.

  • May 3, Deirdre Meldrum, Electrical Engineering, Life on a Chip.

  • June 7, Raymond Huey, Zoology, Mountaineering in Thin Air: Patterns of Success and Death on Himalayan Peaks.

    The science forum colloquia are intended to connect graduate students and faculty with state-of-the-art research at the UW outside their own departments, said organizer Craig Hogan, divisional dean of natural sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences.

    In addition to the eight campus-only lectures, there will be four televised public lectures in April and May. Details on the public lectures will be finalized later, Hogan said. Links to the program can be found on the UW Web site, http://www.artsci.washington.edu/scienceforum



    University Week
    The faculty and staff publication of the University of Washington
    uweek@u.washington.edu
    October 4, 2001