Among the most interesting astronomical bodies is the black hole; but it’s also one of the most misunderstood. In this video, Don Lincoln debunks some common misconceptions about black holes and also explains some important truths.
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The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment is an international experiment to unlock the mysteries of neutrinos. DUNE will be installed in the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility, under construction in the United States. One mile underground, at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota, the excavation of the large LBNF caverns for the DUNE far detectors is in full swing. When complete, the LBNF underground facility will cover an area about the size of eight soccer fields.
How can you locate hidden chambers inside a Mayan pyramid? Mark Adams and his colleagues are in the process of exploring the interior of Kukulcan’s pyramid at Chichén Itzá using particles called muons. In March 2022, he and his teammates travelled to Mexico to start the work.
Dark matter is invisible; it’s everywhere; and it doesn’t interact with matter very often. The same is true for neutrinos. So are neutrinos dark matter? Neutrino physicist Kirsty Duffy and neutrino/dark matter researcher Asher Kaboth (Royal Holloway, University of London) break down the most likely dark matter candidates and where neutrinos fit into the mix.
Using Newtonian physics, physicists have found an expression for the value of kinetic energy, specifically KE = ½ m v^2. Einstein came up with a very different expression, specifically KE = (gamma – 1) m c^2. In this video, Don Lincoln shows how these two equations are the same at low energy and how you get from one to the other.
On July 4, 2012, researchers at the CERN laboratory in Europe announced the discovery of the Higgs boson. It was a tremendous triumph for the Standard Model of particle physics and confirmed a prediction made nearly half a century prior. In 2022, we celebrate the 10th anniversary of that momentous discovery.
Trillions of neutrinos pass through you (and the entire Earth) every second without interacting. How do they pull off this incredible feat? Physicist Kirsty Duffy explains the origin of the neutrino’s superpower on this episode of EvenBananas.
Energy is one of those confusing physics terms that has both familiar and technical meanings. In this video, Don Lincoln sheds some light on what physicists mean when they say the word, as well as some truths about energy that would shock his high school physics teacher.
In part IV of our “How to do big science” series, Fermilab scientist Boaz Klima explains the scientific peer review and publication process, using research at the CMS particle collider experiment at CERN as an example.
In this lecture, part III of the virtual lecture series, “How to do big science,” Deborah Harris talks about the construction of the MINERvA neutrino experiment at Fermilab. The MINERvA collaboration used a high-intensity neutrino beam to collect data on neutrino interactions with a wide variety of materials. Harris served as the project manager of detector construction, and in 2010, she was elected to be the scientific co-spokesperson of MINERvA.