Puzzling Particles and Cutting-Edge Courts

With ever-increasing populations and squeezed public purses, courts across the world are facing enormous challenges and growing backlogs that present a real threat to delivering effective justice. At the same time, AI (artificial intelligence) has progressed to such an extent that in many areas it can outperform human efforts. Can AI provide solutions to legal challenges that can turn the tide and maybe even improve our access to justice? Can we safely involve AI in the legal decision-making process in the first place? In this talk we shall explore the efforts that have already been made and the prospects for the future, including research conducted at the University of Liverpool.

The current best theory of Particle Physics, the so-called Standard Model, does an amazing job of describing the Universe, but it doesn't describe everything - we have no explanation for dark matter, or even why there is any matter at all! This means the hunt is on for anything out of the ordinary – and an experiment located at Fermilab, just outside Chicago, is investigating one such mysterious anomaly, which could possibly hint at new physics. I’ll talk about how we go about making the ridiculously precise measurements needed to help solve this puzzle, share some tales about what doing experimental physics is really like, and discuss what we’ve found so far with our latest results!

Laser spectroscopy is an experimental technique that is used in atomic and nuclear physics research. By using very precise lasers, we can investigate the atoms we are made of to an incredible degree, unraveling how they behave and increasing our knowledge of how the Universe ultimately works. In my talk, I will explain how we carry out these experiments and how they work, show some of the surprising results we've obtained by using laser spectroscopy and tell you about my experience as a PhD researcher in the northernmost nuclear laboratory in the world, in Finland.