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CU-BOULDER PART OF INTERNATIONAL TEAM TO DISCOVER NEUTRINOS CAN CHANGE ‘FLAVORS’
Jun 15th
An international research team led by Japan and including the University of Colorado Boulder may have taken a significant step in discovering why matter trumped antimatter at the time of the Big Bang, helping to create virtually all of the galaxies and stars in the universe.
The experiment, known as the Tokai to Kamioka experiment, or T2K, included shooting a beam of neutrinos underground from the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex, or J-PARC, on the country’s east coast to a detector near Japan’s west coast, a distance of about 185 miles. Elementary particles that are fundamental building blocks of nature, neutrinos generally travel at the speed of light and can pass through ordinary matter, like Earth’s crust, with ease. Neutrinos come in three types: muon, electron and tau.
The T2K team discovered that muon neutrinos can spontaneously change their “flavor” to electron neutrinos, a finding that may help explain why the universe is made up mostly of matter rather than antimatter, said CU-Boulder Assistant Professor Alysia Marino of the physics department, who is part of a university contingent that participated in the experiment. Scientists had previously measured the change of muon neutrinos to tau neutrinos and electron neutrinos to muon neutrinos or tau neutrinos, she said.
The shift of muon neutrinos to electron neutrinos detected in the new experiment is a new type of neutron oscillation that opens the way for new studies of a matter-antimatter symmetry called charge-parity, or CP violation, said Marino. “This CP violation phenomenon has not yet been observed in a neutrino, but may be the reason that our universe today is made up mostly of matter and not antimatter,” she said.
Scientists believe matter and antimatter were present in nearly equal proportions at the onset of the Big Bang. Since matter and antimatter particles cancel each other out, it has been proposed that there must have been CP violation in the early universe that produced slightly more matter than antimatter, which accounts for all the stars, galaxies, planets and life present today.
The T2K project is a collaboration of roughly 500 scientists from 12 nations. Other participating U.S. institutions include Boston University, Brookhaven National Laboratory, the University of California-Irvine, Colorado State University, Duke University, Louisiana State University, Stony Brook University, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Rochester and the University of Washington. The United States contingent is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.
The CU-Boulder group includes Marino, physics Associate Professor Eric D. Zimmerman, postdoctoral researchers Stephen Coleman and Robert Johnson, graduate students Andrew Missert and Tianlu Yuan, and former undergraduates Christopher Vanek, Bryan Kaufman, Eric Hansen, Zhon Butcher and Joshua Spitz.
The CU-Boulder team designed and built one of three magnetic horns used to generate neutrino beams. The horns are large aluminum conductors that use very high electrical currents to produce a magnetic field. The magnetic field focuses on short-lived neutrino-producing particles called pions and kaons, enhancing the intensity of the neutrino beam, said Zimmerman.
The CU-Boulder researchers also developed a device to monitor the position of the proton beam that creates the neutrinos. In addition, they contributed to the installation and operation of a T2K detector at the J-PARC site 60 miles northeast of Tokyo that measures the neutrinos right after they are produced, Marino said.
Zimmerman said more data will be required to confirm the new results. The J-PARC accelerator is being repaired following damage from the earthquake that hit Japan on March 11. The accelerator and experiment are expected to be operational again by the end of the year, said Zimmerman.
Volunteers needed for Valmont Bike Hosts Boulder
May 20th
The City of Boulder’s Parks and Recreation Department, with the help of the Boulder MountainBike Alliance, is looking for congenial people to volunteer for the opening weekend at the Valmont Bike Park on Saturday, June 11, and Sunday, June 12. Volunteers are needed to interact with visitors, answer questions and provide information on the park’s various features. Two- to four-hour shifts are available from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday, June 11, and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday, June 12.
There will be a required training sessions at the park on Tuesday, May 24, and Thursday, May 26 from 5 to 7 p.m. Volunteers must attend one of these sessions. Volunteers should be 16 years of age or older and comfortable interacting with the public. Bicycle riders of all levels are encouraged to respond but riding is not required. Volunteers must sign up atwww.bouldermountainbike.org (click the “Valmont Bike Posse” link on the bottom right) or by emailingvalmont@bouldermountainbike.org.
Reminder: Valmont Bike Park remains CLOSED to unauthorized visitors and riders until opening day (June 11) to allow for completion of construction.
Long-term volunteers are needed through the summer months as well. For more information, call Shelly Ruspakka, Parks and Recreation, at 303-413-7214.
“Boulder is for Startups” from White House Office Of Science and Technology Policy
May 13th
Fifteen years ago, Boulder was considered a sleepy college town known mostly for its great rock-climbing. Today, Boulder is home to one of the strongest entrepreneurial communities in the country, with close to 200 fledgling tech companies and a city campaign that proclaims “Boulder is for startups.” In fact, last year BusinessWeek named Boulder America’s best town for startups, and it was featured in The New York Times for its entrepreneurial scene. Part of its success rests on the fact that Boulder has the highest U.S. concentration of software engineers and PhDs per capita. It is second only to Silicon Valley in percentage of workers employed in the technology sector.
In discussing the success of Boulder as an entrepreneurial success story, I speak from personal experience, having worked at the University of Colorado Law School and run the Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship from 1999 until joining the Obama Administration in 2009. The success of Boulder as an entrepreneurial ecosystem is not merely attracting smart people—it’s really about the community. Notably, in Boulder and the surrounding areas, there is an amazing willingness of successful entrepreneurs to help the up-and-comers.
The rabbi of the Boulder entrepreneurial ecosystem—and someone who has done more than anyone to set this tone—is my good friend Brad Feld, who along with his co-founders of the Foundry Group have given enormous time and energy to building an entrepreneurial community. Brad also brought a number of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to the White House last summer to talk about what could be done to celebrate, support, and spur entrepreneurship. Along with input from many others, that discussion helped shape the Startup America initiative.
One of the great success stories in Boulder is the rise of TechStars, which is now the top startup accelerator in the world and a key partner of Startup America. Since TechStars was founded in Boulder by Brad, Jared Polis (now our representative in Congress), and David Cohen, it has since expanded to four other cities, with offices in Boston, Seattle, and New York City. The program accepts applications from early-stage startups and provides them with seed funding and mentorship opportunities from some of the best and brightest minds in tech. Boulder TechStars alums include Brightkite, which was acquired for $1.5 million; Ignighter, which has received $4.2 million in funding; and, Graphic.ly, which also now has received $4.2 million in funding.
Later next week, Boulder will hold its second annual Startup Week. Startup Week Boulder is five spring days full of events and stars from inside and outside the Boulder tech community. From May 18-22, the city’s startups will be rolling out the red carpet for talented developers, designers, marketers, and general startup enthusiasts.
Many entrepreneurial communities ask how they can be the next Silicon Valley? As Brad has often explained, that’s the wrong question. The right question is how any entrepreneurial community—whether Philadelphia, Cleveland, Detroit, Phoenix, or Portland—can be the best it can be. Each community has its own particular attributes and leaders. Working together and supporting each other, as Boulder leaders have done, is a core part of building a more successful ecosystem.
Monday’s discussion reflected the level of engagement and thoughtfulness that I have come to expect from the Boulder entrepreneurial community. We touched on a series of topics, ranging from access to capital to attracting great employees to reforming regulation to enabling better technology transfer from government labs. As the Roadshow effort comes to a close, I know that these ideas will inform a number of ongoing policy development and implementation initiatives, including the Commerce Department’s upcoming report on innovation and competitiveness.
Phil Weiser is Senior Advisor for Technology and Innovation to the National Economic Council Director