MIT, Laboratory for Nuclear Science

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The Dividends of Funding Basic Science MIT president L. Rafael Reif writes that in the 1970s government spending on fundamental research was 2% of GDP. That’s how to beat cancer, climate change and more.

Leaders of CMS, ATLAS and LHc awarded Special Fundamental Physics Prize by the Milner Foundation

FPP :: Fundamental Physics Prize Foundation announces Physics Frontiers and New Horizons in Physics. test news

LNS Special Seminar
Thursday, October 18, 2012
9:30 AM - Kolker Room

Juan Jose Gomez-Cadenas, University of Valencia, Spain

"Exploring Majorana Landscape: the NEXT Generation"

Neutrinos may be Majorana particles. If so, neutrino less double beta decay processes could be observed by the next generation of bb0nu experiments. I will briefly review the state of the art, then discuss one of the most promising ideas in the field, the use of Hight Pressure Gas Xenon TPC (HPGXe) with electroluminescence gain and optical readout. A 100 kg incarnation of such a device will start operations at the Canfranc Underground Lab in Spain in late 2013 or early 2014. The technology can be extrapolated to 1 ton, and thus lead the exploration of the inverse hierarchy in Majorana landscape.

September 10, 2012
Nuclear and Particle Physics Colloquium

Douglas Finkbeiner, Harvard University

"The Galactic center 130 GeV line: WIMP or artifact?"

The recent claims of a gamma-ray line in the Galactic center at 130 GeV has generated excitement, not least because it could be a signal of dark matter annihilation. I will summarize the current state of the observations of the Galactic center, clusters, and unassociated halo objects, and speculate about models of particle dark matter that could explain the data.

Time: 4:15 pm
Place: LNS Kolker Room, 26-414