Astrophysical neutrinos and how to find them – with Jenni Adams

The aptly named IceCube collaboration, a huge telescope buried in the crystal clear ice of Antarctica, has been running for 10 years. It’s there to detect neutrinos, an almost undetectable particle.

Join Jenni Adams as she discusses how these neutrinos could be the key to finding some of the highest energy sources in the Universe, some a million times more energetic than our sun.

In this talk, Jenni explores how neutrinos are cosmic messengers that can travel through the Universe. Why they barely interact with anything they pass through and the precise instruments and machinery required to detect them.

Jenni Adams research is in the areas of astroparticle physics and cosmology. Astroparticle physics involves research at the interface of astronomy and particle physics. It is a synergy which operates in both directions; particle physics is applied to better understand astrophysical objects as well as using the Universe as a laboratory for high-energy physics. Jenni's interests are in both theoretical and observational aspects.

This talk was recorded on 27 January 2022.

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[humbleguy]

Correction at 08:40: The radius, not the volume of the nucleus is 1/100 000th of the atom.

[porkfat]

Fantastic, loved every minute. The 'physical aspect' of filtering out so much data to get at what's important to analyse, well, it's just so impressive. And that's neutrinos, that are so impossible to detect anway!

[marcuswilson]

Thank you for the excellent presentation, it is fascinating and instructive. I have no issues with the pace and delivery.

[BloobleBonker]

Very enjoyable thanks. Great talk. Love the Casper ghost cartoon!

[solomonlalani]

Very good presentation! Questions: 1. How do we know that whatever has interacted is neutrino? While the reductionist theory of the "combination of upward trajectory + energy levels" is very good, does not it carry our bias that neutrinos can be found in those energy bands? 2. What makes neutrino interact with anything? Arent't they known not to interact with anything at all? 3. How the source of neutrino can be determined since we are measuring an event that must have had happened billions of light years before our measurement?

[DavidvanDeijk]

Great to learn about the results of this experiment. I loved the graph with the flux/energy axis, with the special place for 1987A. Still wondering a little bit about the physics of refreezing those boreholes. That ice must be so clear if you can see a tiny led light up 125 meters or more away

[hamradio]

Jenny: Please take peoples suggestions in a positive way. Take more time between sentences. Pacing is very critical in a one-way talk. Make sure to tell the audience what terms in the chart mean. (SNO) is the Sudbury Northern Ontario Neutrino Detector which resides in a nickel mine. Listen to your recorded talk in a month from now. Good luck. You are a brilliant scholar.

[RT-xxtx]

Great stuff - why do I keep thinking she's recording this from space?

[MaryAnnNytowl]

This is fascinating! I'll be following this project to see what is learned over time, for sure!

[markosullivan]

Absolutely fascinating talk. Really enjoyed this.

[Priapos]

The research sounds like it promises to explain a lot of cosmic ray incidents. If we detect 10s of events per year, then I'd like to increase the size of the detector. Or are there limitations on the detector size? I don't personally have a million million dollars to spend on it, but I'd vote for my country to spend some of that money.

[Robertnight]

Yes gamma are effected by magnetic field BUT neutrinos are lens effected by gravity fields so not straight as you show. And as they have minor mass they do not travel at light speed and are in effect two dimensional which makes there effected more by gravity and hence spacetime . Just a clear thought. Rob

[demoncloud]

@17:35, why are there no Neutrinos detected around the 1eV ? Is it because that is electrons turf or something ? - Just curious, this is probably a dummy question !

[hughholt]

Do you not have a satellite stationery above your artic detector to detect the neutrinos prior to observing that energy? Or is that on your wish list?

[realchristopher]

"Fantastic neutrinos and 'where' to find them". 😂 Eddie Redmayne approved! 😂 😂 🤣 🤣

[brothermine]

Why does a higher energy (faster moving) neutrino have a greater probability of interacting with a nucleon? A counter-intuition is that by moving faster it would spend less time in the vicinity of the nucleon, reducing the chance of interaction. Is the greater probability due to the additional products made possible by the additional kinetic energy?

[Feenix]

I'm just wondering. Is the ratio of atmospheric neutrinos to astrophysical neutrinos proportional to each other in any sense, and does that say anything about either of them?

[jackfrostcm]

Reminded me of Ned Flanders calling neighborinos 🤣🤣🤣

[harshitabhuyan]

I have often seen during my literature review that for astrophysical distances neutrinos are assumed to arrive at earth equally distributed in all 3 flavours. Having previously worked in neutrino oscillations and now switching over to astrophysics, this seems like a very crude assumption for me. I mean when we worked on detector neutrinos or atmospheric/solar neutrinos, we could see a huge difference in flavours and oscillations depending on the distance. Can anyone explain why that assumption is taken for astrophysical neutrinos?

[santiagomatheus]

Is there any hope of detecting neutrino cosmic background with Ice Cube?