Understanding Our Universe from Deep Underground - Dr. Art McDonald

Nobel Laureate and former AECL alum, Dr. Art McDonald, delivered a virtual presentation on Monday, August 22 entitled “Understanding Our Universe from Deep Underground”. Dr. McDonald is the former director of the SNO experiment and continues to participate in SNO legacy analysis, SNO (a new neutrino experiment), and DEAP. He was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of neutrino oscillations. Since 2015, CNL has been engaged with the Dark Matter Experiment using Argon Pulseshape discrimination (DEAP-3600) – currently the world’s largest and most sensitive liquid argon dark matter detector. In fact, CNL researchers are a part of a collaboration of over 60 researchers (including Dr. McDonald) who are invested in observing and identifying this dark matter component of the universe. It’s not only exciting experimental work, but it has fueled new technology development and applications as a result of the multidisciplinary teams involved – including students, post docs, and faculty from universities and national labs across the world. Twice yearly, the collaboration meets to share progress on analysis, simulation, detector hardware, and experimental plans. And CNL is thrilled to be hosting this collaboration meeting at Chalk River Laboratories this week.