This event will take place Wednesday April 23rd, 4-5pm, in 141 Loomis
Abstract: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated in their most recent report that "human activities, principally through emissions of greenhouse gases, have unequivocally caused global warming" and that "climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health." I will discuss how to leverage particle physics to mitigate climate change using “muography”, which allows us to search for the underground metal deposits needed for electric vehicle batteries by imaging cosmic ray muons. This project represents an intersection between the cosmic and energy frontiers that probes high-energy cosmic rays (astro-physics), the production of muons in the atmosphere (particle physics), their flight to the earth's surface (Special and General Relativity), as well as detector technologies and readout electronics. I will briefly review the latest conclusions on climate change, the science and applications of cosmic rays and muography, and our ongoing collaboration to build scintillator-based detectors for mineral exploration. During the colloquium we’ll measure the cosmic ray muon flux using CosmicWatch detectors designed by Janet Conrad’s MIT group and constructed by UIUC students.