Cosmic Particles – Messengers of the Universe – Prof. Glenn Patrick
Over 100 years ago, it was discovered that the Earth is continually bombarded by sub-atomic particles from outer space. Some of these cosmic particles have energies that far exceed those that can be produced in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. High energy gamma rays and enigmatic “ghost” particles called neutrinos have also been detected from the deep cosmos. These have been recently joined by the discovery of gravitational waves – the ripples in space-time predicted by Einstein. This talk will trace the quest to reveal the secrets of these mysterious messengers and where they originate in the Universe.
Professor Glenn Patrick CPhys, FInstP, FRAS is a particle physicist who has spent most of his career working on the massive particle accelerators at the CERN Laboratory in Geneva. Until recently, he was studying the subtle differences between matter and anti-matter deep underground at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) – the biggest machine on the planet! He is now an Honorary Scientist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near to Oxford and is a Fellow of both the Institute of Physics and the Royal Astronomical Society.
A Visiting Professor at the University of Portsmouth and a lecturer for the Open University, Glenn is also well established as a science communicator engaging both students and the public with the beauty of the natural world and the mysteries of the physical universe.