$48. Includes dinner. Part of CWRU’s Lifelong Learning program. Lecture starts at 6pm.

Ben Monreal, Associate Professor of Physics, CWRU

Neutrinos were first detected in 1956 coming out of a nuclear reactor at Savannah River, South Carolina, by Clyde Cowan and Fred Reines, soon thereafter chair of Physics at CWRU, who won the 1995 Nobel Prize for this discovery. Since then, we have discovered that there are three flavors of neutrino–electron, muon and tau. We have detected them coming from the sun, but only at half the rate we expected, and from a distant supernova, right here in Cleveland. We have learned that one flavor of neutrino can turn into another, a mixing phenomenon that strongly suggested very unexpectedly that they have mass. We have yet to detect that mass despite decades of trying, but a new technique may allow us to pin down the electron neutrino’s mass by very carefully measuring the neutrinos produced in the decay of tritium, the heaviest isotope of hydrogen. Unless the cosmologists beat us to it.

https://www.lifelonglearningcleveland.org/dev_students.asp?action=coursedetail&id=4383&main=&sub1=&misc=406&courseinternalaccesscode=&coursetype=0