Physics Colloquium: Dark Matter and Neutrinos: Weakly Interacting Particles in an ...

Thursday, October 17, 2019

3:30 PM-4:30 PM

Russell Neilson, PhD, Drexel University

Dark Matter and Neutrinos: Weakly Interacting Particles in an Electromagnetism Dominated World

Every second a trillion neutrinos from the sun pass through your hand, and it is estimated a million dark matter particles are in a typical room at any given time. However, despite tremendous recent progress, much remains unknown about the properties of neutrinos, due to their extremely low interaction probability with other particles, and dark matter particles have yet to be directly observed at all. I will discuss the challenges to experimental studies of these particles, and describe some current experimental efforts to search for dark matter with underground bubble chambers and to study neutrinos emitted copiously from nuclear reactors.