OXFORD, Miss. – The discovery and research of antimatter is the focus for this month’s installment of a public science forum organized by the UM Department of Physics and Astronomy.
The spring semester’s second meeting of the Oxford Science Cafe is set for 6 p.m. Feb. 18 at Lusa Pastry Cafe, 2305 West Jackson Ave. in Oxford. Jonathan Wurtele, physics professor at the University of California at Berkeley, will discuss “Synthesizing, Trapping and Probing Antihydrogen.” Admission is free.
“The anti-electron, known as a positron, was first predicted in 1931 by Paul Dirac and discovered experimentally by Carl Anderson in 1932,” Wurtele said. “It was not until 1955 that Emilio Segre and Owen Chamberlain discovered the antiproton.”Wurtele’s 30-minute presentation will review how this antimatter has captured the public’s imagination, what happens at CERN when physicists create, trap and probe antihydrogen, and plans for precision measurements of its properties. The talk will be followed by a question-and-answer session.
Wurtele received his bachelor’s degree and doctorate in physics from UC-Berkeley. He was a research scientist at MIT’s Plasma Fusion Center and assistant and associate professor in MIT’s physics department.
He is faculty senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a fellow of the American Physical Society, and has been a foreign research fellow at the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science in Japan. Wurtele shared the John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research in 2011. He is a member of the Antihydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus Collaboration, which reported the first trapping of neutral antimatter in 2010, and the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study.
For more information about Oxford Science Café programs, go to http://www.phy.olemiss.edu/oxfordsciencecafe. For more information about the Department of Physics and Astronomy, go to http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/physics_and_astronomy/ or call 662-915-5311.