Lecturer to discuss life at the South Pole and cosmic ray research

One of the nation’s leading ground-based cosmic ray researchers will visit The Citadel this month to share his research and what it is like to live at the South Pole.

Jordan Goodman, one of the nation’s leading ground-based cosmic ray researchers will visit The Citadel this month to share his research and what it is like to live at the South Pole.

Jordan Goodman, a professor at the University of Maryland at College Park, will speak to physics students and faculty at 6:30 p.m., Tuesday, April 13 in the Graham Copeland Auditorium in Grimsley Hall. His lecture is free and open to the public.

For most people summer is meant to be spent at the beach or lake or someplace else warm. For Goodman the driest, windiest, and coldest place on earth during the Antarctic summer is the perfect place to learn more about our universe.

Goodman is studying neutrinos, which are subatomic particles produced by the decay of radioactive elements and elementary particles that lack an electric charge. They're so tiny that they can pass through solid matter without colliding with any molecules and they travel at close to the speed of light, making them incredible intergalactic messengers.

“The study of neutrinos from cosmic objects can tell us about the most energetic processes in the universe, such as gamma ray bursts and events at super massive black holes,” Goodman said.

Key to the research is the construction of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. The IceCube telescope will be buried deep in the Antarctic ice and what is finds could help scientists understand cosmic energy and what fuels the bombardment of cosmic rays to the Earth.

A graduate of the University of Maryland at College Park, Goodman has led teams on projects including the CYGNUS cosmic ray detector array, the MILAGRO Gamma Ray Experiment and the Super-Kamiokande Neutrino Experiment in Japan. In addition to IceCube he also is currently working on the HAWC Gamma-Ray Telescope in Mexico.