2 comments to Comments on the Bob Stokstad Interview

• Peter Torreggiani

  August 23, 2022 at 5:11 pm · Reply

  Thank you for unfolding your interesting life to share it so clearly and humbly. The most amazing thing I learnt from you is that neutrinos get to us from the sun in 8 minutes! Did your attention extend to what is done underground in an that enormous particle accelerator near Geneva?

  • Bob Stokstad

    August 23, 2022 at 11:48 pm · Reply

    Thank you for your comment, Peter.
    Of the particle accelerators that man has built, CERN’s Large Hadron Collider at Geneva sits at the pinnacle. And, as you know, its crowning achievement has been the discovery of the Higgs Boson ten years ago. But Nature also accelerates particles at special sites throughout the cosmos, and to energies many orders of magnitude higher than CERN or other earth-based accelerators can ever hope to achieve. These particles are the Cosmic Rays, neutrinos included, that bombard Earth and are studied by detectors like IceCube at the South Pole. To answer your question, my work has concentrated on the latter. In terms of the number of scientists and dollars, research in cosmic rays and neutrinos astronomy is way down in comparison. (And that’s appropriate.) The two research areas complement each other. It’s great to be able to work in one area and appreciate the achievements of the other.