Astrophysics is undergoing rapid progress as new observatories allow us to view the universe using neutrinos and gravitational waves in place of more traditional information carriers like light. Scientists have dubbed this the era of multimessenger astronomy.
In the case of neutrinos, the messengers themselves are perplexing and quite unlike other known particles. An advisory panel to the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation recently recommended neutrino physics as one of the top funding priorities over the coming decade – even after eight physicists have already been awarded Nobel Prizes for contributions to the subject.
This lecture tells the story of the neutrino, from the first inklings of its existence a century ago up to its present-day role at the forefront of astronomy and physics. Along the way Johns talks about some of the most profound aspects of quantum mechanics and some of the most extreme events in the universe. Learn what makes this particle so unusual and what we hope to accomplish with the monumental facilities built to detect it.
About Luke Johns
Luke Johns is a theoretical physicist and Richard P. Feynman Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He received his PhD in physics from the University of California San Diego in 2020. Prior to moving to Los Alamos, he was a NASA Einstein Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. The lion’s share of his work centers on neutrino physics and the various subjects that overlap with it: supernovae, neutron star mergers, cosmology, particle physics beyond the Standard Model, and transport theory. His other research interests include quantum thermodynamics and information theory, motivated by the groundbreaking potential of new quantum technologies.