Bulletin of the American Physical Society
2006 APS April Meeting
Saturday–Tuesday, April 22–25, 2006; Dallas, TX
Session A1: Plenary Session I |
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Sponsoring Units: APS Chair: John Hopfield, APS President, Princeton University Room: Hyatt Regency Dallas Landmark A |
Saturday, April 22, 2006 8:30AM - 9:06AM |
A1.00001: Exploring the Final Frontier of the Solar System Invited Speaker: In December 2004 at 94 AU, Voyager 1 crossed the termination shock marking the abrupt slowing of the supersonic solar wind and began exploring the region where the solar plasma presses outward against the local interstellar medium. The flow in this region is much slower than expected and the turbulence is different than in the supersonic solar wind. In contradiction to many predictions that the shock was the source of medium energy anomalous cosmic rays, their intensity did not peak at the shock, indicating their origin remains to be discovered. However, the shock is the source of low energy ions that reveal new aspects of the acceleration process. Recent results from Voyager 2 at southern solar latitudes suggest that the shock may be 7 to 10 AU closer than at Voyager 1 in the north, consistent with an asymmetric distortion of the heliosphere by a local interstellar magnetic field. The Voyagers will provide more insight into this outermost region of the heliosphere and what lies beyond as they continue their journeys to interstellar space. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, April 22, 2006 9:06AM - 9:42AM |
A1.00002: Nature's First Liquid: The Quark Gluon Plasma Invited Speaker: High energy collisions of nuclei recreate the high energy densities that existed a few microseconds after the Big Bang. Matter under such conditions is expected to be a plasma of quarks and gluons not confined inside hadrons. The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) produces such matter in the laboratory, and its behavior has proven to be quite surprising. Examination of thousands of particles in the final state yields evidence for very rapid thermalization leading to a dense, opaque, collectively flowing system. The degrees of freedom cannot be hadrons and the interactions are not those expected for asymptotically free quarks. Rather, the matter behaves like a liquid with low viscosity, as may be expected for some plasmas. I will review experimental results and discuss insights into the properties of the produced matter. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, April 22, 2006 9:42AM - 10:18AM |
A1.00003: Accelerator-based Neutrino Oscillation Studies: Present and Future Invited Speaker: The study of neutrino oscillations using accelerator-based beams is entering a renaissance. Experiments on three continents aim to elucidate the nature of this phenomenon in its entirety as part of a world-wide program involving both accelerator and non-accelerator techniques. Neutrino oscillations represent the first evidence of physics beyond the Standard Model; the results will have profound implications for not only particle physics, but our understanding of how the universe evolved to its current state. The MINOS and upcoming OPERA and ICARUS experiments aim to confirm our understanding of the atmospheric neutrino phenomenon via oscillations and precisely measure its parameters. These experiments will be followed by the T2K and proposed NOvA experiments, which will search for a third, as-yet unobserved mode of oscillation that may hold the key towards understanding how antineutrinos differ from neutrinos and the hierarchy of their masses. Meanwhile, MiniBooNE at Fermilab is searching for oscillations indicated by the LSND experiment that would indicate a complete break from the Standard Model. Such new physics could take the form of heretofore unseen sterile neutrinos or exotic forms of symmetry breaking that would dramatically change the landscape of particle physics. [Preview Abstract] |
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