Seminars

Lawrence S. Pinsky,
Physics Department, University of Houston

One of Two seminars today...see before for abstract of second one...

First Results From Medipix in Space

The first Medipix-based active pixel detector Radiation Environment Monitors (REM) units were launched to the ISS on August 2, 2012.  They were first deployed on October 16, 2012.  Data are to be taken over a period of a minimum of several continuous months with the ability to adjust the internal operational parameters of each device separately.  The crew can monitor the integrated doses and dose rates via the on-board laptop screens, but the main data stream will be downloaded for full analysis on the ground.  Preliminary data analysis shows that the devices are working well and providing a unique view of the radiation environment inside the ISS.  Details of the directionality of the trapped radiation in the South Atlantic Anomaly are possible on a track-by-track basis.  This technology will also be deployed on the upcoming first test of the new US Orion crew module and is baselined for integration in the final operational version of that spacecraft.  Versions of the technology are also being developed to be deployed on unmanned satellites to measure the details of the Earth's trapped radiation in order to provide inputs to improved models of the both the trapped protons and the trapped electrons.

Bio:            Prof. Pinsky holds the John & Rebecca Moores distinguished professorship in the Physics Department at the University of Houston, where he also currently serves as the department chairperson.  In addition to physics, Prof. Pinsky has a J.D. and LL.M. in Intellectual Property and Information Law and holds an Adjunct Faculty appointment at the University of Houston Law Center where he teaches Internet Law.  He received his B.S. in physics from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1968 and his Masters and Ph.D. in physics from the University of Rochester in 1973.  While a graduate student there, he was drafted into the military during the Vietnam War and was stationed at NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center (now the Johnson Space Center) in Houston.  He worked on Heavy-ion dosimetry during the later Apollo missions and also was a Co-Investigator for the Apollo Light Flash Investigation, flying a nuclear emulsion-based helmet to assess the coincidence between the passage of heavy-ions through the astronauts eyes and their perception of light flashes.  In recent years, he has been involved in several CERN experiments, including ALICE at the LHC.  He is also a member of the CERN-based FLUKA Monte Carlo transport code Collaboration and the Medipix2 & Medipix3 Collaborations.  In addition, he maintains a more casual relationship to the Daya Bay neutrino oscillation experiment and the Darkside dark matter search.  Last year Prof. Pinsky was elected as a Corresponding Member of the International Academy of Astronautics.
http://phys.uh.edu/people/detail/?155622-961-5=lpinsky

All Welcome

Lawrence S. Pinsky, Physics Department, University of Houston

An Update from the Quest for the Quark-Gluon Plasma, and the State of Matter during the Quark Eon of the Big Bang's First Microsecond.

The second of two seminars given today..... (see above for details or earlier one).

For the past several decades, as accelerators were tuned and dedicate facilities were built to provide relativistic beams of heavy ions, the search for evidence for the creation of a predicted new state of matter, a "Quark-Gluon Plasma," has been ongoing.  This search in motivated by the need to understand the conditions that existed in the early universe just before it was 1 microsecond old during the so-called Quark Eon.   The most recent work has come from the dedicated Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at the Brookhaven National Lab in New York, and from the one-month per year running at the LHC at CERN with colliding Pb beams at several TeV/A in the center of mass.  While many interesting discoveries have been made, and clear evidence for the creation of a new state of matter has been forthcoming, the behavior of this newly discovered state dies not conform exactly what was anticipated beforehand.  This new state, rather than behaving as an asymptotically free ideal gas, looks more like a fluid and on that approaches a theoretically perfect liquid.  A brief introduction to particle physics and the strong interaction will be given along with a review of the experimental techniques and a summary of the major findings to date, as well as some comments about the future potential for the field.

 All Welcome