• Health
  • Science
  • U.S.
  • Technology
  • Business
  • World
  • Politics
  • Entertainment
  • Sports

Building a Better World

News and information

  • Home
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact Us
  • Our Team

Fermilab’s 14,000-ton NOvA detector successfully captures neutrino oscillation

August 10, 2015 By Adrienne Dean

Fermilab’s 14,000-ton NOvA detector successfully captures neutrino oscillation

Fermilab’s NOνA experiment is helping scientists determine the role that ghostly particles called neutrinos played in the evolution of the cosmos.

“Why is there matter?” asks a modern-day-Hamlet-cum-Fermilab-researcher-extraordinaire, Jeffrey Nelson.

This foundational cosmological question has baffled scientists and philosophers alike, since the ancient times, when humans first became baffled by things.

Thanks be to modern science, to help us understand.

Fermilab’s NOvA project – the most powerful accelerator-based neutrino experiment in the U.S., and the longest-distance one in the world – announced its first set of results from its NOvA experiment.

The experiment involved shooting a neutrino beam across a 500-mile distance, from the Illinois-based Fermilab to the 14,000-ton NOvA detector in Ash River, Minnesota. Because neutrinos rarely interact with other matter, they travel straight through the Earth without a tunnel. The particles completed the 500-mile interstate trip in less than three milliseconds.

As predicted, particle detectors in Minnesota were able to confirm that neutrinos do oscillate – meaning that they morph from one type of neutrino into another (there are three different types, or “flavors,” total – muon, electron, and tau).

One of the primary goals of the NOvA experiment is to study this tendency of neutrinos to oscillate. In order to study such behavior, scientists needed to create an intense neutrino beam and send them continuously through a large detector for long periods of time.

The physicists in Minnesota measured how many muon-type neutrinos had changed into electron-types over the 500-mile journey, and how many simply disappeared.

“People are ecstatic to see our first observation of neutrino oscillations,” said NOvA co-spokesperson Peter Shanahan of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. “For all the people who worked of the course of a decade …[on] this experiment, its beyond gratifying.”

Many more insights into the origins of matter can be expected from the NOvA project in the months and years to come.

 

Sharing

Facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Filed Under: Front Page, Science Tagged With: Fermilab, neutrino, NOva

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Follow Us

Facebookrss

Search:

Recent Posts

  • NASA’s InSight spacecraft makes important course correction May 26, 2018
  • Scientists outraged at latest Trump decision May 15, 2018
  • Huge uproar erupts over major incident at Utah park May 13, 2018
  • Incredible moon discovery stuns scientists May 12, 2018
  • Authorities shocked by discovery about common painkiller May 6, 2018
  • Outrageous crocodile experiment stuns scientists May 5, 2018
  • Great Barrier Reef is too quiet, scientists say May 1, 2018
  • Massive Hiroshima bomb discovery shocks scientists May 1, 2018
  • Earth will be slammed by massive asteroid April 29, 2018
  • Teens are doing something incredibly alarming in schools April 29, 2018
  • Huge discovery in Tasmania stuns scientists April 28, 2018
  • Shocking discovery in New Jersey stuns authorities April 22, 2018
  • Huge volcanic explosion could wipe out the United States April 21, 2018
  • Huge controversy erupts over world’s hottest pepper April 15, 2018
  • SpaceX is about to do something astonishing April 15, 2018

Copyright © 2021 Jones Kilmartin Group, LLC · Metro Pro Theme On Genesis Framework · WordPress