More than 250 students, faculty and community members gathered at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa on April 25, for a rare opportunity to learn directly from a Nobel Prize-winning physicist.
Arthur McDonald, co-recipient of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics, delivered a public talk, “How to Know a Neutrino from a Hole in the Ground,” at Bilger Hall. The lecture offered insight into how researchers use underground laboratories to study neutrinos—tiny, nearly invisible particles that pass through everything around us. In addition to many curious facts, including bananas as sources of neutrinos, McDonald talked about the Nobel week festivities in Stockholm, Sweden in 2015, when he received his prize at the Nobel medal award ceremony.
McDonald shared stories from his work in Canada, where his team operated experiments 2 kilometers underground in a working mine, studying the properties of neutrinos produced in the Sun and arriving on Earth at nearly the speed of light. Their measurement of different types of neutrinos proved that neutrinos have mass, reshaping the field of particle physics.
“The talk was both informative and fun—and it was great to see so many of my friends from the department in the audience,” said Pui Hin Rhoads, an astronomy student.
Yeunggyun Kwon, an electrical engineering student, added, “I loved how he talked and was passionate about his topic. He also made it easy for us to understand. I knew neutrinos were shapeshifters but I didn’t know it could be part of our body!”
Open to all ages and backgrounds, the talk provided UH students and faculty with a valuable chance to engage with cutting-edge science and hear directly from a leading figure in the field. Faculty said the event sparked meaningful discussions and inspired new ideas for coursework and collaborative research with the SNOLAB, a deep underground experimental facility in Sudbury, Canada, one of the two top underground laboratories for fundamental physics in the world.
“Prof. McDonald impressed upon students that it is exciting and interesting to be a scientist, that many physicists working together can build amazing detectors, and the path to the discovery of neutrino mass was long and winding, albeit fun!” UH Mānoa Professor Jelena Maricic said.
Honoring UH professor
McDonald’s visit was part of a multi-day symposium attended by a number of distinguished neutrino physicists from around the world, hosted by the UH Mānoa Department of Physics and Astronomy to honor longtime professor John Learned. Learned has been deeply involved in the world of neutrinos. He’s worked on international science projects in places such as the Kamioka mine in Japan, unveiling properties of these nearly invisible particles and what they can tell us about the universe.
Learned had the early vision for building giant detectors underwater to study neutrinos from outside our galaxy, an idea that has since come to fruition in the Mediterranean Sea and in the Antarctic ice. This symposium honored his long and impactful career in unraveling the secrets of these fundamental building blocks of nature, while at the same time looking forward to the next generation of scientists and research.
The Department of Physics and Astronomy is housed in UH Mānoa’s College of Natural Sciences.
