Around the Low Country
Lecturer to discuss cosmic ray research and living at the South Pole
CHARLESTON, SC - April 13, 2010 - One of the nation’s leading ground-based cosmic ray researchers will visit The Citadel this month to share his research and what it is like to live at the South Pole.
Jordan Goodman, a professor at the University of Maryland at College
Park, will speak to physics students and faculty at 6:30 p.m., Tuesday,
April 13 in the Graham Copeland Auditorium in Grimsley Hall. His lecture
is free and open to the public.
For most people summer is meant to be spent at the beach or lake or
someplace else warm. For Goodman the driest, windiest, and coldest place
on earth during the Antarctic summer is the perfect place to learn more
about our universe. Goodman is studying neutrinos, which are low-mass
subatomic particles that lack an electric charge. They are produced by
nuclear interactions, including fusion, radioactive decay and other
mechanisms. Their lack of electric charge allows them to traverse a
great deal of matter without collisions; that combined with their high
speed (close to the speed of light) makes them incredible intergalactic
messengers.
“The study of neutrinos from cosmic objects can tell us about the most
energetic processes in the universe, such as gamma ray bursts and events
at super massive black holes,” Goodman said.
Key to the research is the construction of the IceCube Neutrino
Observatory. The IceCube detector will be buried deep in the Antarctic
ice and what it finds could help scientists understand cosmic energy and
what fuels the bombardment of cosmic rays to the Earth.
