Our last show of the year on October 28th is the Nerdtrino Spooktacular Halloween Show, features neutrinos – mysterious “ghost particles” that pass straight through us and the Earth. Right now, a massive new neutrino detector is being built deep in the Pacific Ocean right here in BC. Hear all about “P-ONE” and find out what the heck a neutrino actually is.
Follow us on Eventbrite to get updates when we post new events! Click here for tickets to the Oct. 28th show.
Experience one of the city’s most unique 19+ nights out, where science gets social and curiosity takes the mic.
Every Nite features two 20-minute talks from scientists, experts, and curious thinkers who can explain big ideas in plain, human language. No decoder ring required. Just real knowledge, shared with humour, great food and drinks. After each talk, get up close and personal with speakers when the audience joins in live Q&As.
We’re happy to announce Trivia is back! You asked for it and we’re giving it to you!
Show starts promptly at 7pm, please arrive early. Doors open at 6pm – come early to eat, Jack’s has an amazing menu!
We’ll have a Costume Contest for those of you who’d like to dress as your favourite ghost or “ghost particle” – we’ll leave that interpretation to you! You can wear any type of costume, all costumes are eligible. NOTE: Costumes NOT required to have a fang-tastic time.
Our speakers are:
Matthias Danninger, Associate Professor, Particle Physics, SFU
The Pacific Ocean Neutrino Experiment (P-ONE)
How do you catch a particle that can fly straight through the Earth? You build a gigantic telescope at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
Neutrinos are tiny “ghost particles” that travel across the universe carrying clues from some of its most extreme places. The problem? They almost never interact with anything, which makes them ridiculously hard to detect.
Enter P-ONE. Matthias Danninger and an international team are building one of the world’s largest neutrino telescopes, kilometres beneath the Pacific Ocean off the coast of BC. The first detector line is planned to be deployed this year – marking the start of an exciting phase for this new project.
Most neutrinos pass straight through the Earth without interacting with anything, but once in a very long while, one interacts with a particle in an atom in the water. That interaction can produce a fast-moving charged particle that creates a tiny flash of blue Cherenkov light – and that’s what P-ONE detects.
Instead of looking up at the sky, P-ONE will watch the dark ocean for tiny flashes of light. Matthias will show us how you turn the bottom of the ocean into a telescope – and use it to hunt some of the universe’s most elusive particles.
Speaker Bio: Matthias Danninger is a particle and astro-particle physicist and Associate Professor at SFU. He is currently involved in the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN and the P-ONE neutrino experiment. He is the spokesperson of the P-ONE collaboration, Canada Research Chair in particle physics, a recipient of the 2013 Physics World Breakthrough of the Year and 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.
Scott Oser, Professor, TRIUMF, UBC
“Observing the Sun from Deep Underground” – Solar Neutrinos
One hundred billion neutrinos pass through your thumbnail every second. These ghostly interlopers are produced in fusion reactions in the core of our Sun. We should be grateful, for without solar neutrinos, stars wouldn’t shine.
For decades physicists tried to measure the number of neutrinos coming from the Sun, but the count kept coming up short – to the point that people worried that the Sun’s core itself might be dying. Not ideal.
Scott was part of a Canadian-led team that succeeded in finding the missing neutrinos, by building a giant neutrino detector deep underground near Sudbury, Ontario (SNO). He’ll describe what it’s like to do bleeding edge science in the middle of an active nickel mine, and how the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory solved the solar neutrino crisis, winning the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Speaker Bio: Scott Oser is a professor at UBC and TRIUMF Affiliate Scientist, specializing in particle astrophysics. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a winner of the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics and the CAP-TRIUMF Vogt Model, and has lectured on physics topics in Ireland…in Irish.
Seating after show starts is not guaranteed.