CHEM 1225B

meng727 [at] umd [dot] edu

William McDonough

My research interest is to measure Earth’s geo-neutrino flux and to better understand the engine drives Earth. Geo-neutrino is a type of antineutrino emits from the heat producing element’s decay chain through the process of Beta minus decay. It is a ghost-like particle and can only interact through weak force interaction. Currently, there are three antineutrino detectors in operation, which are KamLAND (Japan), Borexino (Italy) and SNO+ (Canada). By the year 2025, another two detectors will come online, which are JUNo (China, Sichuan) and Jinping (China, Zhuhai), and we are expecting to better predict Earth’s geo-neutrino flux with the combination of the five detectors.

In order to better calculate geo-neutrino flux, we need comprehensive information about heat producing element abundance and Earth’s crust thickness. I would like to study side by side with geologists, physicists and chemists, and give this emerging scientific field my best work.

Wipperfurth, S.A., Guo, M., Sramek, O., and McDonough, W.F. (2018) Earth's chondritic Th/U: Negligible fractionation during accretion, core formation, and crust–mantle differentiation. Earth and Planetary Science Letters. 498 196-202. DOI: 10.1016/j.epsl.2018.06.029