School of Physical Sciences
From an impossible dream to the unreachable stars: the story of the neutrino
Srubabati Goswami
Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad
Date: February 20, 2023 (Monday)
Time: 16:30 hrs (4:30 pm)
Venue: Seminar Room, First Floor, SPS, JNU
Wolfgang Pauli proposed the existence of a particle devoid of electric charge and mass, which makes it almost invisible, to explain the conservation of energy in nuclear beta decay. This elusive electrically neutral particle, re-christened neutrino by Enrico Fermi, was detected almost three decades later by Clyde Cowan and Frederick Reines. Since then neutrino physics has remained an active area of research, providing an indication of physics beyond our established ideas. Neutrinos also carry information from distant stars. This talk will trace the journey of the neutrino from an impossible dream of Pauli to the observation of neutrinos from unreachable stars, culminating in the state of the art ICECUBE detector at the south pole.