Colorado State Hosts Nobel Laureate's Discussion Of Cosmic Rays
Thursday, November 21, 1996
FORT COLLINS--A Nobel laureate whose latest work focuses on
trying to understand the origin and energy of cosmic rays will be
at Colorado State University Dec. 3 for a public presentation.
Colorado State physics researchers will have more than a
passing interest in what James W. Cronin, of the Enrico Fermi
Institute at the University of Chicago, will say in his
presentation "Eighty-Five Years of Cosmic Ray Research: A Human
and Scientific Drama." Cronin's talk on cosmic rays touches
ongoing research at Colorado State in collaboration with the
Pierre Auger Project headed by the speaker. The presentation,
which begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Lory Student Center Theatre, is
part of the Ian L. Spain Memorial Lectures at Colorado State,
sponsored by the physics department, the Guest Scholars Program
of the Graduate School and Associated Students of Colorado State
University. The lecture is free and open to the public.
Colorado State researchers in the physics department now are
working on the Auger Project, a study designed to better
understand cosmic rays which continuously rain down on us from
space, some of which are the highest-known energy particles in
the universe. The Auger Project will collect and attempt to
identify the source of these cosmic rays, which have
approximately 100 million times more energy than anything
produced by humans. Recently, John Harton, physics professor at
Colorado State, represented the United States at a presentation
in Argentina to promote housing one of two 1,600-square-mile
research centers for the project in Utah.
Colorado State used $600,000 in state and federal funding
originally slated for university involvement in the now-defunct
superconducting supercollider project as the basis for research
into cosmic rays and elementary particle physics. So far,
Colorado State researchers have received an additional $1 million
in grants for work in new projects.
Colorado State researchers lead by Professor Robert Wilson
will take part in an experiment to collide beams of matter and
anti-matter to produce a very concentrated amount of pure energy
which, in turn, creates different types of matter and anti-
matter. This research, housed at Stanford University, is designed
to understand why the universe is made up of so much more matter
than anti-matter. This project has been designated by President
Clinton as a top scientific priority.
Cronin, whose lecture will touch on this research among
other topics, shared the 1980 Nobel Prize in physics for
demonstrating that one of the seemingly inviolable laws governing
the behavior of subatomic particles is sometimes violated. This
work, done in collaboration with Val L. Fitch of Princeton
University, is said to have contributed to an explanation of how
matter in the universe could exist, despite grounds for believing
that it should have been annihilated at the birth of the
universe, according to a report in the New York Times.
In addition to his public presentation, Cronin will deliver
a scientific colloquium aimed at researchers. This presentation
is set for 4:10 p.m. Dec. 4 in Room 220 of the Lory Student
Center.
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