Physics Colloquia

CSI Gravity: Investigating Mysteries of Fundamental Physics with Black Holes

Dr. Helvi Witek, Asst. Professor, Dept. of Physics, UIUC
Black holes are among the most exciting predictions of Einstein's theory of general relativity, composed of the fabric of spacetime itself. Observations of black holes offer unique access to extreme gravity, and they enable us to investigate long-standing puzzles in fundamental physics ranging from dark matter to the very nature of gravity itself.

IceCube: Opening a Neutrino Window on the Universe from the South Pole
Professor Francis Halzen, Professor and Director of IceCube, Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Below the geographic South Pole, the IceCube project has transformed one cubic kilometer of natural Antarctic ice into a neutrino detector. IceCube detects more than 100,000 neutrinos per year in the GeV to 10 PeV energy range. From those, we have isolated a flux of high-energy neutrinos originating beyond our Galaxy, with an energy flux that is comparable to that of the extragalactic high-energy photon flux observed by the NASA Fermi satellite. With a decade of data, we have identified their first sources, which point to the obscured dense cores associated with the supermassive black holes of some active galaxies as the origin of high-energy neutrinos (and cosmic rays!).

Roshanak Etemadpour, Ph. D. candidate, Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

The title and abstract for this talk will be posted when made available.