Wednesday Nite at the Lab
press release: For the fall semester, WN@TL goes hybrid both with Zoom and with in-person presentations. The zoom registration link is still go.wisc.edu/240r59. Starting September 15, you can also watch a live web stream at biotech.wisc.edu/webcams
On November 10 we have lucked out, because this year International Cosmic Day falls on a Wednesday. I know—you’re thinking like I think: hey, every Wednesday is Cosmic!
On this happy occasion I’m delighted to welcome to WN@TL my friend from Firenze (the one in Italy), Paolo Desiati, who will share his insights into the outa sight ways of The Cosmic Rays.
Title: Celebrating Cosmic Rays on the 10th International Cosmic Day
Description: The talk will bring the audience through the gripping journey that started in 1911 with the unexpected discovery of the invisible but ubiquitous cosmic rays and continues today with searches for their sources in the universe. The journey will bring us through exciting discoveries that unveiled a complex and diverse invisible universe and technological advances that made it possible to see what our eyes cannot. Cosmic rays, once objects of study to reveal their very nature, became a useful tool for unveiling other mysteries—from looking through volcanoes or the Great Pyramid of Giza to peeking inside a nuclear reactor or hunting for smuggled weapons. Cosmic rays, consisting of the nuclei of almost all elements in the periodic table, travel through space at almost the speed of light. Humans have evolved in Earth’s protected environment and are directly exposed to the harmful effects of cosmic rays when traveling through interplanetary space. So we'll explore how astronauts, at the dawn of a new space era, can be sheltered from such a source of radiation. Finally, as technology advances toward high levels of sophistication, we'll look into potential future development limitations imposed by cosmic rays reaching Earth from space and how we can mitigate these effects.
Bio: Paolo Desiati is a senior scientist at the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center (WIPAC), a research center of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He studied physics at the University of Florence and got his PhD at the University of Rome La Sapienza in Italy. He spent two years as a postdoc at DESY-Zeuthen, in Berlin, Germany, working with the AMANDA neutrino telescope, a prototype of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. He then joined UW–Madison in 2001 and became staff in 2003. With IceCube, he has worked on point-source neutrino searches but mostly on cosmic ray scientific analyses. Paolo is also involved in the coordination between IceCube operations and the science working groups to support the science reach of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory.
Links:
Note: To commemorate the auspicious Day of the Ray, after the Q&A we will adjourn either to Union South or to The Libraray (speaker’s choice) for Libations and Absolutions.
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