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SMU Dark Matter Day celebration culminates in a dark matter rock hunt on Halloween

“In the spirit of science being a pursuit open to all, we are excited to welcome all members of the SMU family to become dark matter hunters for a day.” — SMU physicist Jodi Cooley

This Halloween, people around the world will be celebrating the mysterious cosmic substance that permeates our universe: dark matter.

At SMU, the Department of Physics in Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences is hosting a Dark Matter Day celebration, and students, faculty, staff and DFW residents are invited to join in the educational fun with events open to the public.

To kick off the festivities, two speaking events by scientists in the field of dark matter will familiarize participants with the elusive particles that scientists refer to as dark matter. The first talk is oriented toward the general public, while the second is more technical and will appeal to people familiar with one of the STEM areas of science, technology, engineering or mathematics, particularly physics and astrophysics.

Then throughout Halloween day, everyone is invited to test their skills at finding dark matter — in this case, a series of rocks bearing educational messages related to dark matter, which the Society of Physics Students has painted and then hidden around the campus.

Anyone lucky enough to find one of the 26 rocks can present it at the Physics Department office to receive a prize, says SMU physics professor Jodi Cooley, whose research is focused on the scientific challenge of detecting dark matter.

“In the spirit of science being a pursuit open to all, we are excited to welcome all members of the SMU family to become dark matter hunters for a day,” Cooley said. “Explore your campus in the search for dark matter rocks, just as physicists are exploring the cosmos in the hunt for the nature of dark matter itself.”

Anyone who discovers a dark matter rock on the SMU campus is encouraged to grab their phone and snap a selfie with their rock. Tweet and tag your selfie #SMUDarkMatter so that @SMU, @SMUResearch and @SMUPhysics can retweet photos of the lucky finders.

As SMU’s resident dark matter scientist, Cooley is part of the 100-person international SuperCDMS SNOLAB experiment, which uses ultra pure materials and highly sensitive custom-built detectors to listen for the passage of dark matter.

SuperCDMS, an acronym for Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search, resides at SNOLAB, an existing underground science laboratory in Ontario, Canada. Located deep underground, SNOLAB allows scientists to use the earth as a shield to block out particles that resemble dark matter, making it easier to see the real thing.

The SuperCDMS SNOLAB experiment, expected to be operational in 2020, has been designed to go deeper below the surface of the earth than earlier generations of the research.

“Dark matter experiments have been a smashing success — they’ve progressed farther than anyone anticipated. The SuperCDMS SNOLAB experiment is quite unique,” Cooley said. “It will allow us to probe models that predict dark matter with the tiniest masses.”

For more on Cooley’s research, go to “Hunt for dark matter takes physicists deep below earth’s surface, where WIMPS can’t hide. — Margaret Allen, SMU

Dark Matter Day events at SMU:

  • Sunday, Oct. 29, 4 p.m., McCord Auditorium — Maruša Bradač, Associate Professor at the University of California at Davis, will give a public lecture on dark matter. A reception will follow the lecture from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. in the Dallas Hall Rotunda with beverages and light snacks. This event is free and open to the public, and is designed to be open to the widest possible audience.
  • Monday, Oct. 30, 4 p.m., Fondren Science Building, Room 158 — SMU Associate Professor Jodi Cooley will present a seminar on the SuperCDMS direct-detection dark matter search experiment. This event is part of the Physics Department Speaker Series. While this event is open to the public, it will be a more technical talk and may appeal more to an audience interested in the STEM areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, especially physics and astrophysics.
  • Tuesday, Oct. 31, 9 a.m. – 4 p.m., SMU Main Campus, Dark Matter Rock Hunt — The SMU Department of Physics has hidden “dark matter rocks” all across the SMU main campus. If you discover one of the dark matter rocks, bring it to the main office of the Physics Department, Fondren Science Building, Room 102, and get a special prize. All SMU students, faculty, staff and community members are welcome to join in the search.
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A Total Eclipse of the First Day of School

Dedman College, SMU Physics Department host Great American Solar Eclipse 2017 viewing

Thousands of students, faculty and townspeople showed up to campus Monday, Aug. 21 to observe the Great American Solar Eclipse at a viewing hosted by Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences and the SMU Department of Physics.

The festive event coincided with the kick-off of SMU’s Fall Semester and included Solar Eclipse Cookies served while viewing the rare astronomical phenomenon.

The eclipse reached its peak at 1:09 p.m. in Dallas at more than 75% of totality.

“What a great first day of the semester and terrific event to bring everyone together with the help of Dedman College scientists,” said Dedman Dean Thomas DiPiero. “And the eclipse cookies weren’t bad, either.”

Physics faculty provided indirect methods for observing the eclipse, including a telescope with a viewing cone on the steps of historic Dallas Hall, a projection of the eclipse onto a screen into Dallas Hall, and a variety of homemade hand-held devices.

Outside on the steps of Dallas Hall, Associate Professor Stephen Sekula manned his home-built viewing tunnel attached to a telescope for people to indirectly view the eclipse.

“I was overwhelmed by the incredible response of the students, faculty and community,” Sekula said. “The people who flocked to Dallas Hall were energized and engaged. It moved me that they were so interested in — and, in some cases, had their perspective on the universe altered by — a partial eclipse of the sun by the moon.”

A team of Physics Department faculty assembled components to use a mirror to project the eclipse from a telescope on the steps of Dallas Hall into the rotunda onto a screen hanging from the second-floor balcony.

Adjunct Professor John Cotton built the mount for the mirror — with a spare, just in case — and Professor and Department Chairman Ryszard Stroynowski and Sekula arranged the tripod setup and tested the equipment.

Stroynowski also projected an illustration of the Earth, the moon and the sun onto the wall of the rotunda to help people visualize movement and location of those cosmic bodies during the solar eclipse.

Professor Fred Olness handed out cardboard projectors and showed people how to use them to indirectly view the eclipse.

“The turn-out was fantastic,” Olness said. “Many families with children participated, and we distributed cardboard with pinholes so they could project the eclipse onto the sidewalk. It was rewarding that they were enthused by the science.”

Stroynowski, Sekula and others at the viewing event were interviewed by CBS 11 TV journalist Robert Flagg.

Physics Professor Thomas Coan and Guillermo Vasquez, SMU Linux and research computing support specialist, put together a sequence of photos they took during the day from Fondren Science Building.

“The experience of bringing faculty, students and even some out-of-campus community members together by sharing goggles, cameras, and now pictures of one of the great natural events, was extremely gratifying,” Vasquez said.

Sekula said the enthusiastic response from the public is driving plans to prepare for the next event of this kind.

“I’m really excited to share with SMU and Dallas in a total eclipse of the sun on April 8, 2024,” he said.

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Dallas Innovates: SMU, UTA Scientists To Help Unlock Mystery of Neutrinos

A massive particle detector a mile underground is the key to unlocking the secrets of a beam of neutrinos that will be shot beneath the Earth from Chicago to South Dakota.

Reporter Lance Murray with Dallas Innovates reported on the research of biochemistry professors Thomas E. Coan in the SMU Department of Physics.

Coan is one of about 1,000 scientists around the world collaborating on DUNE — a massive particle detector being built a mile underground in South Dakota to unlock the mysteries of neutrino particles.

The research is funded by the by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science in conjunction with CERN and international partners from 30 countries.

SMU is one of more than 100 institutions from around the world building hardware for the massive international experiment that may change our understanding of the universe. Construction will take years and scientists expect to begin taking data in the middle of the next decade, said Coan.

The Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF) will house the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. When complete, LBNF/DUNE will be the largest experiment ever built in the United States to study the properties of the mysterious particles called neutrinos.

The Dallas Innovates article, “SMU, UTA Scientists To Help Unlock Mystery of Neutrinos,” published July 28, 2017.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Lance Murray
Dallas Innovates

Construction of a huge particle detector in South Dakota could lead to a change in how we understand the universe, and scientists from the University of Texas at Arlington and Southern Methodist University in Dallas will play roles in helping to unlock the mystery of neutrinos.

Ground was broken a mile underground recently at the Sanford Underground Research Facility at the Homestake Gold Mine in Lead, South Dakota for the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF) that will house the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE).

SMU physicist Thomas E. Coan, and UTA Physics professors Jonathan Asaadi and Jaehoon Yu will be among scientists from more than 100 institutions around the world who will be involved in the experiment.

DUNE will be constructed and operated at the mine site by a group of about 1,000 scientists and engineers from 30 nations.

The Homestake Mine was the location where neutrinos were discovered by Raymond Davis Jr. in 1962. It was the the largest and deepest gold mine in North America until its closure in 2002.

LBNF/DUNE will be the biggest experiment ever built in the U.S. to study the properties of neutrinos, one of the fundamental particles that make up the universe.

“DUNE is designed to investigate a broad swath of the properties of neutrinos, one of the universe’s most abundant but still mysterious electrically neutral particles,” Coan said in the release.

These puzzling particles are similar to electrons, but they have one huge difference — they don’t carry an electrical charge. Neutrinos come in three types: the electron neutrino, the muon, and the tau.

What is the experiment’s goal? Coan said it seeks to understand strange phenomena such as neutrinos changing identities in mid-flight — known as “oscillation” — as well as the behavioral differences between a neutrino and its anti-neutrino sibling.

“A crisp understanding of neutrinos holds promise for understanding why any matter survived annihilation with antimatter from the Big Bang to form the people, planets, and stars we see today,” Coan said in the release. “DUNE is also able to probe whether or not the humble proton, found in all atoms of the universe, is actually unstable and ultimately destined to eventually decay away. It even has sensitivity to understanding how stars explode into supernovae by studying the neutrinos that stream out from them during the explosion.”

Coan also is involved in another massive particle detector in northern Minnesota knows as NOvA, where he is a principal investigator.

Read the full story.

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Construction begins on international mega-science neutrino experiment

Groundbreaking held today in South Dakota marks the start of excavation for the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility, future home to the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment.

SMU is one of more than 100 institutions from around the world building hardware for a massive international experiment — a particle detector — that could change our understanding of the universe.

Construction will take years and scientists expect to begin taking data in the middle of the next decade, said SMU physicist Thomas E. Coan, a professor in the SMU Department of Physics and a researcher on the experiment.

The turning of a shovelful of earth a mile underground marks a new era in particle physics research. The groundbreaking ceremony was held Friday, July 21, 2017 at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, South Dakota.

Dignitaries, scientists and engineers from around the world marked the start of construction of the experiment that could change our understanding of the universe.

The Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF) will house the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. Called DUNE for short, it will be built and operated by a group of roughly 1,000 scientists and engineers from 30 countries, including Coan.

When complete, LBNF/DUNE will be the largest experiment ever built in the United States to study the properties of mysterious particles called neutrinos. Unlocking the mysteries of these particles could help explain more about how the universe works and why matter exists at all.

“DUNE is designed to investigate a broad swath of the properties of neutrinos, one of the universe’s most abundant but still mysterious electrically neutral particles,” Coan said.

The experiment seeks to understand strange phenomena like neutrinos changing identities — called “oscillation” — in mid-flight and the behavioral differences between a neutrino an its anti-neutrino sibling, Coan said.

“A crisp understanding of neutrinos holds promise for understanding why any matter survived annihilation with antimatter from the Big Bang to form the people, planets and stars we see today,” Coan said. “DUNE is also able to probe whether or not the humble proton, found in all atoms of the universe, is actually unstable and ultimately destined to eventually decay away. It even has sensitivity to undertanding how stars explode into supernovae by studying the neutrinos that stream out from them during the explosion.”

Coan also is a principal investigator on NOvA, another neutrino experiment collaboration of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Laboratory. NOvA, in northern Minnesota, is another massive particle detector designed to observe and measure the behavior of neutrinos.

Similar to NOvA, DUNE will be a neutrino beam from Fermilab that runs to Homestake Gold Mine in South Dakota. DUNE’s beam will be more powerful and will take the measurements NOvA is taking to an unprecedented precision, scientists on both experiments have said. Any questions NOvA fails to answer will most certainly be answered by DUNE.

At its peak, construction of LBNF is expected to create almost 2,000 jobs throughout South Dakota and a similar number of jobs in Illinois.

Institutions in dozens of countries will contribute to the construction of DUNE components. The DUNE experiment will attract students and young scientists from around the world, helping to foster the next generation of leaders in the field and to maintain the highly skilled scientific workforce in the United States and worldwide.

Beam of neutrinos will travel 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) through the Earth
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, located outside Chicago, will generate a beam of neutrinos and send them 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) through the Earth to Sanford Lab, where a four-story-high, 70,000-ton detector will be built beneath the surface to catch those neutrinos.

Scientists will study the interactions of neutrinos in the detector, looking to better understand the changes these particles undergo as they travel across the country in less than the blink of an eye.

Ever since their discovery 61 years ago, neutrinos have proven to be one of the most surprising subatomic particles, and the fact that they oscillate between three different states is one of their biggest surprises. That discovery began with a solar neutrino experiment led by physicist Ray Davis in the 1960s, performed in the same underground mine that now will house LBNF/DUNE. Davis shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 2002 for his experiment.

DUNE scientists will also look for the differences in behavior between neutrinos and their antimatter counterparts, antineutrinos, which could give us clues as to why the visible universe is dominated by matter.

DUNE will also watch for neutrinos produced when a star explodes, which could reveal the formation of neutron stars and black holes, and will investigate whether protons live forever or eventually decay, bringing us closer to fulfilling Einstein’s dream of a grand unified theory.

Construction over the next 10 years is funded by DOE with 30 countries
But first, the facility must be built, and that will happen over the next 10 years. Now that the first shovel of earth has been moved, crews will begin to excavate more than 870,000 tons of rock to create the huge underground caverns for the DUNE detector.

Large DUNE prototype detectors are under construction at European research center CERN, a major partner in the project, and the technology refined for those smaller versions will be tested and scaled up when the massive DUNE detectors are built.

This research is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science in conjunction with CERN and international partners from 30 countries.

DUNE collaborators come from institutions in Armenia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Greece, India, Iran, Italy, Japan, Madagascar, Mexico, the Netherlands, Peru, Poland, Romania, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom and the United States. — Fermilab, SMU

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CTNewsJunkie.com: Ignoring Science At Our Own Peril

“A scientific theory is a very well-tested explanation, built from facts, confirmed hypotheses, and inferences.” — SMU physicist Stephen Sekula

An Op-Ed in the online Connecticut news outlet CTNewsJunkie.com tapped the expertise of SMU Associate Professor of Physics Stephen Sekula.

The writer of the piece, High School English teacher Barth Keck at Haddam-Killingworth High School, quoted the comments of Sekula, who spoke to Keck’s media literacy class.

The opinion piece, “Ignoring Science At Our Own Peril,” addressed the issue of science illiteracy. The editorial published April 14, 2017.

Sekula was among the SMU physicists at Geneva-based CERN — seat of the world’s largest collaborative physics experiment — in December 2011 who found hints of the long sought after Higgs boson, dubbed the fundamental “God” particle.

Sekula conducts research at the energy frontier through CERN’s ATLAS Experiment. He co-convened the ATLAS Higgs Subgroup 6: Beyond-the-Standard Model Higgs Physics from 2012-2013. He is involved in the search for additional Higgs bosons. He also is an authority on big data and high-performance computing.

Read the full Op-Ed.

EXCERPT:

By Barth Keck
CTNewsJunkie.com

Last week was a newsworthy week — at least for this high school English teacher.

In a story out of Hartford last Wednesday, the state Board of Education officially eliminated the requirement that standardized test scores be tied to teacher evaluations. The move, while controversial, was a common-sense decision that recognizes the many problems created by evaluations based on standardized tests. A newsworthy development, indeed, for anyone interested in education.

Even so, a more newsworthy event for me occurred on Tuesday when Southern Methodist University professor Stephen Sekula visited English and science classes at his alma mater and my workplace, Haddam-Killingworth High School. Speaking to my students in Media Literacy, Sekula explained in vivid detail how scientists rigorously and deliberately employ the scientific method in their never-ending search for answers. It is with similar vigilance, he explained, that individuals must consider the multitude of messages around them to become truly “media-literate.”

“A scientific theory is a very well-tested explanation, built from facts, confirmed hypotheses, and inferences,” according to the physics professor. “It is more powerful than a fact because it explains facts.”

Unfortunately, said Sekula, the word “theory” is often likened to “opinion” in public dialogue — as in “human-caused climate change is just a theory” — but there’s an essential difference between theory and opinion. Scientists know the difference, of course, but so should all citizens. Thus, a media-literate person sees a red flag whenever someone — a “pseudoscientist” — uses “theory” and “opinion” interchangeably.

“Pseudoscience readily admits opinions and equates that with the idea of scientific theory,” explained Sekula, “requiring no high quality evidence to make explanatory claims about the world.”

And there it was: the explanation for so much happening in the public sphere right now. Fake news, conspiracy theories, science-averse officials appointed to science-dependent federal agencies. Professor Sekula’s message could not be more timely and, therefore, newsworthy.

Read the full Op-Ed.