Physicists from the United States are asking for $1 billion dollars in funding for a project to study ghost-like neutrino particles. The proposal centers on building an underground tunnel, 800 miles long, between Chicago and South Dakota.
Neutrinos surround us at all times, rarely interacting with matter. Trillions of the particles pass through our bodies, and the Earth, every second. These particles have extremely low masses, and no electrical charge. This is what allows them to pass through matter so easily.
Steven Ritz of the University of California is chairman of the panel that recommended the massive project.
If approved, this equipment would be the largest, most expensive, particle physics project built in America in the last several years. The project would likely still fall far short of the capabilities of other facilities, such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Europe. Investigators at the LHC recently reported the discovery of the Higgs Boson particle, a subatomic particle believed to provide mass to all matter.
The request was made on May 22, as part of recommendations for federally sponsored experiments in particle physics over the next decade. Construction time for the project is estimated at 10 years, and the facility will likely operate for around 20 years after it begins operations.
Neutrinos have been the subject of intense research by physicists for many decades.
Neutrino detectors are among some of the strangest tools used by astronomers and physicists. They are usually built underground, often in salt mines, in an effort to record the elusive particles. These detectors are quite large, in order to allow as many neutrinos as possible to pass through the system. This acts much the same way as larger telescopes allow more light to enter.
Super-Kamiokande is a massive neutrino observatory, built under Mount Kamioka, adjacent to the city of Hida, in Gifu Prefecture in Japan. This detector uses a vast pool of water, surrounded by photo detectors, to record rare instances of a neutrino colliding with a molecule of matter.
The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory is a similar, smaller facility which employs heavy water as a medium. Other detectors have used gallium, chlorine, or other materials as a neutrino target.
The only known sources ever recorded emitting neutrinos are the sun and supernova 1987A.
"A supernova explosion happens when a star at least 8 times more massive than the sun collapses. An enormous amount of energy (more than 99 percent of energy emitted from the sun for 4.5 billion years) is released primarily in the form of neutrinos in just 10 seconds," neutrino researchers from the Super-Kamiokande experiment stated on their Web site.
Astronomers believe neutrino detectors will, one day, provide them with a new eye on the universe. Being able to study neutrinos, new stellar processes and behavior could be revealed.
