Ghost particles in the ice: the IceCube neutrino telescope at the South Pole

Where/When/Accessibility? - Lecture - Other lectures

Where/When/Accessibility?

Tuesday December 3, 2019 - 7pm-8pm: lecture, followed by reception
Faculty of Sciences - Campus Sterre - Krijgslaan 281 - Gent - building S9 - 2nd floor - Auditorium A2 - A lift is available in the building.
You can easily reach the campus by bike, bus and train. The campus is situated on walking distance from railway station Gent-Sint-Pieters.
Should you prefer to come by car you can park on the campus on the night of the lecture until 10pm. Simply drive up close to the barriers and they will open.

Lecture

Prof. Dirk Ryckbosch - Dept. Physics and Astronomy - RG Experimental Particle Physics

Neutrinos are the most mysterious of elementary particles. They easily penetrate through enormous amounts of material, even all the way through the Earth. That is why they are sometimes called the "ghost particle". But this also makes them perfect messengers from the Universe: they escape even from the center of exploding stars. We can observe them from places that are completely obscured for normal telescopes.

The IceCube collaboration has built a 1 cubic kilometer large telescope for neutrinos at the South Pole. A giant detector buried 2 kilometer deep in the ice, but still able to look at the cosmos. This instrument has now observed the first neutrinos coming from astrophysical sources, opening a new window on the universe. In this talk I present the IceCube telescope, an instrument like no other. And we have a look at the very first results showing in what kind of extreme environment the cosmic neutrinos are born.

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Other lectures

This lecture forms part of a larger series organized within the scope of Public Outreach. In this manner we give you a taste of research conducted at the Faculty of Sciences. View the full program for 2019-2020.

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