The Pesky Neutrino (426th Brookhaven Lecture)

The speaker will describe the past, present and possible future of the 'pesky' neutrino, the existence of which was first hypothesized in 1930 to rescue energy conservation in the radioactive beta decay of nuclei. Although difficult to detect, the neutrino has played an essential role in the understanding of the subatomic world of weak interactions. Recent evidence that neutrinos are massive is the only experimental evidence in particle physics that is inconsistent with the Standard Model. There is the possibility that the neutrino will shed light on the origin of fermion mass and the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe.