SMU physicist works on a mystery of the universe*

Father Paul Nienaber, S.J., is part of a collaboration of physicists who on Wednesday announced important first results from a major particle physics experiment.
Read more.

Nienaber, chair of the physics department at Saint Mary’s University, is one of 77 scientists from 17 institutions working for almost a decade on the MiniBooNE experiment at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermilab in Batavia, Ill.

Using the Fermilab particle accelerator, Nienaber and his colleagues cleared up a long-standing puzzle involving different kinds of neutrinos and their properties. Neutrinos are tiny fundamental building blocks of the universe related to electrons.

A previous experiment had raised the tantalizing possibility that neutrino masses could be much larger than expected; the MiniBooNE result conclusively rules that out. “This is another part of the answer to the big question,” Nienaber said. “Why is the universe the way it is?”

Nienaber said researchers are “trying to understand how the universe came to be and how it works today. Once we understand nature at its smallest scale, we can make more intelligent guesses at what happens at the largest scale.”

For additional information, go to www.fnal.gov/pub/presspass/press_releases/BooNE-box.html