Subterranean answers to some very deep questions

Art McDonald

A list of the deepest questions in physics would certainly include (i) How do neutrinos fit into the Standard Model of Elementary Particles? (ii) Do they have a finite mass? (ii) Do they change from one type to another? (iii) Are the present detailed models of the Sun correct? (iv) What is the Dark Matter that is known to make up about 23% of the mass of our Universe? (v) How did we end up with a matter-dominated Universe when it appears that there was almost an equal amount of anti-matter made in the Big Bang?

By going 2 km underground and creating an ultra-low radioactivity environment in the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory and the new SNOLAB, we have answered some of these questions and are poised to address the others over the next few years. The experiments to do this and the very deep questions that motivate them will be the subject of this lecture.

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Additional resources for this talk: slides, video.