Neutrino: The Particle that Shouldn't Exist

In 1930, the great physicist Wolfgang Pauli did something that "no theorist should ever do": he invented a new particle that he thought nobody could ever detect in order to save the principle of energy conservation in certain radioactive decays he was studying. Pauli's impossible particle turned out to be real: the neutrino, a particle that one of its discoverers called "the most tiny quantity of reality ever imagined by a human being". This lecture will chart the fascinating history and sc...