![]() ![]() ![]() The NOvA experiment is a collaboration of 180 scientists, technicians and students from 20 universities and laboratories in the U.S and another 14 institutions around the world. Department of Energy's Office of Science. The NOvA detector will be operated by the University of Minnesota under a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Inside this short time window, the burst of neutrinos from Fermilab will be much easier to spot. Once the upgraded Fermilab neutrino beam starts, the NOvA detector will take data every 1.3 seconds to synchronize with the Fermilab accelerator. But the flood of more visible cosmic -ray data makes it difficult to pick them out. Naturally occurring neutrinos from cosmic rays, supernovae and the sun stream through the detector at the same time. The detector at its current size catches more than 1,000 cosmic rays per second. "They are simple and abundant and a perfect tool for tuning up a new detector." "Everybody loves cosmic rays for this reason," Muether said. They are great for calibration, said Mat Muether, a Fermilab post-doctoral researcher who has been working on the detector. When cosmic rays pass through the NOvA detector, they leave straight tracks and deposit well-known amounts of energy. The detector records these streams of light, enabling physicists to identify the original neutrino and measure the amount of energy it had. When a neutrino interacts in the NOvA detector, the particles it produces leave trails of light in their wake. Later this year, Fermilab, outside of Chicago, will start sending a beam of neutrinos 500 miles through the earth to the NOvA detector near the Canadian border. "The more we know about neutrinos, the more we know about the early universe and about how our world works at its most basic level," said NOvA co-spokesperson Gary Feldman of Harvard University. Many of the neutrinos around today are thought to have originated in the big bang. Neutrinos are as abundant as cosmic rays in the atmosphere, but they have barely any mass and interact much more rarely with other matter. Scientists' goal for the completed detector is to use it to discover properties of mysterious fundamental particles called neutrinos. JBL CHARGE 5 WONT TURN OFF FULLThe full detector will measure more than 200 feet long, 50 feet wide and 50 feet tall. The active section of the detector, under construction in Ash River, Minn., is about 12 feet long, 15 feet wide and 20 feet tall. Fermilab manages the project to construct the detector. "It's taken years of hard work and close collaboration among universities, national laboratories and private companies to get to this point," said Pier Oddone, director of the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Using the first completed section of the NOvA neutrino detector, scientists have begun collecting data from cosmic rays-particles produced by a constant rain of atomic nuclei falling on the Earth's atmosphere from space. What will soon be the most powerful neutrino detector in the United States has recorded its first three-dimensional images of particles. NOvA neutrino detector records first 3-D particle tracks Until then, it's all still life as we safely know it. For now, though, the project's still in the baby steps phase - only 12 feet of the detector (the currently operational portion) has been successfully built out - so the reality-shattering, scientific epiphanies will have to wait. Beyond its obvious visual appeal, data like this should give physicists at the DOE's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory insight into the nature of neutrinos (some of which are said to have been issued from the Big Bang) and, by extension, the origins of our ever-expanding universe. It's the first such visual record made possible by the University of Minnesota-operated facility that, when completed, will extend for more than 200 feet underground in an area near the Canadian border and endure regular bombardment by a controlled stream of neutrinos. That Tron-ish, equalizer-like graphic is actually a 3D representation of particle activity left behind by cosmic rays interacting within NOvA, the Department of Energy's under construction neutrino detector. All apologies accepted if you mistook that image above as cover art for Daft Punk's new album - it's not (although the duo should consider it.). ![]()
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