#NOVA NEUTRINO HOW TO#

Scientists can study the timing, direction and energy of the particles that interact in their detectors to determine whether they came from Fermilab or elsewhere.įermilab creates a beam of neutrinos by smashing protons into a graphite target, which releases a variety of particles. Because neutrinos interact with matter so rarely, scientists expect to catch just about 5,000 neutrinos or antineutrinos during that time. The NOvA experiment is scheduled to run for six years. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation and other funding agencies. The experiment receives funding from the U.S. The NOvA collaboration is made up of 208 scientists from 38 institutions in the United States, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Greece, India, Russia and the United Kingdom.

#NOVA NEUTRINO HOW TO#

“We started meeting more than 10 years ago to discuss how to design this experiment, so we are eager to get under way.” “The first neutrinos mean we’re on our way,” said Harvard physicist Gary Feldman, who has been a co-leader of the experiment from the beginning. Crews will put into place the last module of the far detector early this spring and will finish outfitting both detectors with electronics in the summer. Once completed, NOvA’s near and far detectors will weigh 300 and 14,000 tons, respectively. “This early result suggests that the NOvA collaboration will make important contributions to our knowledge of these particles in the not so distant future.”

That includes the staff at Fermilab, Ash River Lab and the University of Minnesota module facility, the NOvA scientists, and all of the professionals and students building this detector,” said University of Minnesota physicist Marvin Marshak, Ash River Laboratory director. “That the first neutrinos have been detected even before the NOvA far detector installation is complete is a real tribute to everyone involved. Even though only a fraction of the experiment’s larger detector, called the far detector, is fully built, filled with scintillator and wired with electronics at this point, the experiment has already used it to record signals from its first neutrinos. The two detectors of the NOvA experiment are placed so far apart to give the neutrinos the time to oscillate from one flavor to another while traveling at nearly the speed of light. They come in three types, called flavors, and change between them as they travel. “Without Argonne’s contributions and expertise, this project would have had a hard time getting off the ground.” “All of the big high-energy physics projects today involve massive collaborations,” said Argonne physicist Maury Goodman. Together, these extrusions form a 51-feet-high by 51-feet-long by 220-feet-deep detector that weighs more than 14,000 tons and is potentially the largest self-supporting plastic structure ever built. The neutrino detector relies on a large assembly of plastic extrusions developed by researchers at the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory. Once the experiment is fully operational, scientists will catch a precious few each day. The detector in Ash River is operated by the University of Minnesota under a cooperative agreement with the Department of Energy’s Office of Science.īillions of those particles are sent through the earth every two seconds, aimed at the massive detectors. They aim this beam in the direction of the two particle detectors, one near the source at Fermilab and the other in Ash River, Minn., near the Canadian border. Scientists generate a beam of the particles for the NOvA experiment using one of the world’s largest accelerators, located at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago. “We are proud to reach this important milestone on our way to learning more about these fundamental particles.” “NOvA represents a new generation of neutrino experiments,” said Fermilab Director Nigel Lockyer. Studying them could yield crucial information about the early moments of the universe. Neutrinos are abundant in nature, but they very rarely interact with other matter. – The NOvA experiment consists of two huge particle detectors placed 500 miles apart, and its job is to explore the properties of an intense beam of ghostly particles called neutrinos.

Nova neutrino