Spring 2026
The Astroparticle Lens: Using Particles from Space to Understand Our World
By Keith McBride, Grainger Fellow
Saturdays March 28 - May 16th, 2026 at 11am
Location: Kersten Physics Teaching Center, 5720 South Ellis Avenue, room 106
There will be a guest lecturer on May 9th.
This event is free and for the public. Attend in person or watch the livestream here!
In 1912, Victor Hess discovered radiation from space by ascending in a balloon, forever altering our perspective of the cosmos. Born in the most extreme environments across the Universe, these high-energy particles remain one of the greatest mysteries of physics.
One piece of this puzzle is particle physics research, a pursuit of the nature of matter using colliders on Earth in controlled experiments. These high-energy particle interactions are abstract and microscopic phenomena that seem disconnected from our tangible world. However, in this series, that perspective is reversed. We are now harnessing these interactions of particles from space—muons, neutrinos, and ultra-high-energy cosmic rays— as practical tools to X-ray Earth's core, probe the mechanics of lightning, and search for water on the Moon.
We will explore how these "messengers across the Universe" have evolved into a high-precision interdisciplinary toolkit with vast potential to enable scientific discoveries.
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