Professor Francis Halzen, principal investigator of the ICECUBE project, and Gregory Breit, Professor at the University of Wisconsin (USA), will talk about “ICECUBE: The Under-the-Ice Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica: Opening a New Window on the Universe from the South Pole”.
The ICECUBE project at the South Pole melted 86 holes 2.5-kilometer-deep in the Antarctic icecap to construct an enormous astronomical observatory. The experiment discovered a flux of neutrinos from deep space with energies more than a million times those of neutrinos produced at accelerator laboratories. These cosmic neutrinos are created in some of the most violent processes in the universe since the Big Bang, gaining their energy in the cosmic particle accelerators that are still enigmatic sources of cosmic rays. This lecture will discuss the IceCube neutrino telescope and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of cosmic origin. It will highlight the recent discovery that high-energy neutrinos—and cosmic rays—originate in sources powered by rotating supermassive black holes.
This event is organised by the Department of Physics (DF) at Instituto Superior Técnico. It will be held on October 9th, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., in the auditorium of Técnico Congress Centre, Alameda Campus.