Daniel I. Scully

Particle Physics

Between October 2009 and October 2013 I was a PhD student at the University of Warwick, studying Particle Physics - the science of the smallest, most basic things which make up everything in the universe. Specifically, I researched particles known as "neutrinos" which hold many of the answers to where Particle Physics goes next. Unfortunately, they are also incredibly elusive.

In addition to my research I was actively involved in communicating physics to wider audiences. This was mostly in schools, but also at science interest groups (such as Cafe Scientifique, Astronomy groups), local radio stations etc. The biggest talks were two Christmas lectures, in 2011 and 2012 which drew 120 and 210 people respectively.

You may enjoy this video of me explaining the Higgs boson during the week it was discovered:

Most of my research work was conducted as part of the T2K experiment, based in Japan. It fires a beam of neutrinos almost 300km through Japan to investigate how they change as they travel. If you are interested in this research, you can freely access all the papers I was an author on at the arXiv. My PhD thesis, submitted to the University of Warwick, is titled Neutrino Induced Coherent Pion Production.

For a more accessible introduction to neutrinos, here's the video of my first Christmas lecture. It was on the subject of the recent, at the time, news that an experiment may have detected neutrinos travelling faster than the speed of light. We now know that this was not the case but the introduction, covering Particle Physics and neutrinos in particular, is still relevant.