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Dihaoine, 08/Jul/2016
Heavy Flavour Particle Physics on Islay
And now for something a bit different. Most people probably associate Islay with whisky, nature, wildlife, history and the like. But every once in a while a slightly ‘exotic’ event takes place on Islay, like the one starting early next week (with a public event later in the week):
The event is the Heavy Flavour 2016 - Quo Vadis? conference, taking place at Ardbeg Distillery 11-15 July. From what I understand the scientists attending the conference (it is invitation only, but keep reading, there's more to come for the rest of us) will be talking about elementary particles like Atoms, Electrons, Nuclei, Quarks and possibly more. In particular they are studying very heavy quarks, a species of quarks and hence the name ‘Heavy Flavour’. They are working closely together with the Large Hadron Collider at CERN near Geneva (Ha, I've heard of that one!) and it seems when they don't work on highly complicated maths they also enjoy a good Islay single malt whisky.
But now on to the real interesting part of this post. While the conference as such is invitation only for the scientists there will also be public outreach activities at Islay High School 12-14 Jul with a public lecture at 17:30 on Wednesday 13/Jul. During the public lecture Prof. Franz Muheim will talk about ‘Higgs bosons, antimatter and all that’ and Matjaz Vidmar will speak about ‘Astrotechnology, how it changed the world’. See the poster for details (click on it for the larger version):
I think this is a great opportunity, I hope many people will visit the lecture as well as the outreach activities at Islay High School. If you're on Twitter you can find both the school as well as some of the scientists, I'm sure there will be updates through the week:
- Islay High School
- Russell Pollock (tech teacher at Islay High School)
- Greig Cowan (Research fellow at Edinburgh University)
- Matjaz Vidmar (Postgraduate research student at Edinburgh University, he will be giving one of the lectures)
- Franz Muheim (Professor at Edinburgh University, he will be giving one of the lectures)
- And if there's anyone I've missed or haven't found yet please let me know so that I can add them here
Have a great time everyone!
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