So Much for So Little: Giant Experiments Seek Out Tiny Neutrinos [Slide Show]
It takes a massive detector to spot the remarkably elusive particle
So Much for So Little: Giant Experiments Seek Out Tiny Neutrinos [Slide Show]
- ICE FISHING: To build the IceCube array, workers had to drill deep into the ice, then lower strings of sensors called digital optical modules (DOMs) such as the one pictured above. Each of the 86 sensor strings holds 60 DOMs, which are now frozen into place up to 2.5 kilometers below the surface... IceCube Collaboration/NSF
- EYES PEELED: Like Double Chooz, the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment in China uses near and far detectors to measure the oscillations of neutrinos emanating from a nuclear power plant. The photo above shows the photomultiplier tubes within the Daya Bay detectors, which register the collision of a neutrino with the fluid filling the detector cylinder... Lawrence Berkeley National Lab/Roy Kaltschmidt, photographer
- DEEP DOWN: Buried underground in the inactive Soudan iron mine in Minnesota, the 5,400-metric-ton octagonal MINOS detector picks up neutrinos from Fermilab in Illinois, 735 kilometers away. The particles leave Fermilab as a nearly pure beam of muon neutrinos, but most have changed into tau neutrinos by the time they reach the MINOS detector... Haley Buffman/NSF and Jamie Yang/NSF