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ghost particle detectors

Neutrinos are extremely small and fast, so much so that to detect them you have to build really amazing experiments, such as the ones shown here. Japan’s Super-K is a 50,000 ton tank of water, half a mile underground, so clear that divers get vertigo. The latest South Pole neutrino telescopes, which point into the earths core rather than at the sky, have arrays of detectors which are much larger than the Empire State building and are frozen deep in the Antarctic ice core.

(Ranked by user votes) Vote on and review the contenders below.

Super-K is the mother of all water filled neutrino detectors. A truly giant tank, in a Japanese mine, over 100 feet in all directions and filled with 50,000 tons of water, so pure, that divers in it have experienced vertigo. 11,000 photomultiplier tubes line every surface, giving it a spectacular look, as can be seen in this picture, where the tank is half filled and engineers are examining it in a row boat.

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wistit »

Super Kamiokande. more...

(votes: +55)

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Kamland sits underground in a mine in the Japanese Alps. It is designed to detect electron antineutrinos produced by the 50 or so commercial nuclear reactors that surround it.The mineral oil, photomultiplier covered bubble is of a similar design to other detectors such as Borexino.

(votes: +9)

The Sudbury neutrino detector is a 40 foot wide geodesic framed bubble, filled with heavy water and covered in photomultiplier tubes. It sits a mile and a half underground in a mine in Ontario. The experimental results were published in 2001 and showed that solar neutrinos have mass, due to their oscillation between different flavors.

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wistit »

The Sudbury Neutrino Detector. more...

(votes: +8)

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The KATRIN experiment is designed to measure the mass of the electron neutino. Its centerpiece is a huge spectrometer tank that was manufactured a couple of hundred miles from its destination in another part of Southern Germany. Because of its size, however, the tank took one of the most bizarre detours in the history of detours since local canals and highways did not allow direct transportation.The tank traveled over 6000 miles by land and sea, through Austria, Hungary, Serbia, Romania, across the Black Sea, past Turkey and rounding Greece and around Sicily, along the coast of North Africa, through the Straights of Gibraltar, round Portugal to the Bay of Biscay, up the West coast of France and through the English Channel, landing in Holland and making its way by land again, to Southern Germany. From this photo you can see that it must have stood out, somewhat, along the way.

(votes: +7)

ANITA is a balloon flown neutrino detector that flies 3 times the height of a commercial aircraft, over Antarctica, looking for neutrinos produced by the collision of cosmic rays with cosmic background radiation.

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wistit »

ANITA balloon borne neutrino detector. more...

(votes: +6)

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IceCube is the mother of all neutrino detectors. A giant array of detectors frozen into the Antarctic ice core by hot drilling. It is the successor to the AMANDA project, a neutrino telescope, designed to look at neutrinos from outside the solar system.

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wistit »

IceCube Neutrino Observatory. more...

(votes: +6)

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Borexino is a giant fluid bubble that floats in purified water and sits, surrounded by photomultiplier tubes, over half a mile underground, in Italy. It is designed to detect solar neutrinos, out of the way from cosmic rays.

(votes: +4)

The LSND experiment ended in 98 and produced a result which contradicted the standard model. That result has since been contradicted by Fermilabs MiniBooNE experiment.LSND consisted of a large cylinder lined with a thousand light detectors and filled with 50,000 gallons of mineral oil and a dash of scintillator material.

(votes: +4)

MiniBooNE is a small but important neutrino experiment. It was built to test the controversial findings of the LSND, which it showed to be false, leaving the predictions of the Standard Model intact.

(votes: +3)

This was the first neutrino detector, built by Cowan and Reines. It consisted of 100 gallons of water containing dissolved Cadmium Chloride, surrounded by light detectors.Neutrinos produced by a nuclear plant passed into the solution, bumped a proton into a neutron and a positron which then merged with an electron to produce a detectable flash of two photons and a gamma ray as the Cadmium nucleus absorbed the neutron.

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wistit »

Cowan and Reines Neutrino Experiment. more...

(votes: +2)

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MINOS consists of two detectors (near and far), that analyze neutrinos produced at Fermilab. Shown here is the far detector that sits in a mine 500 miles away and 2000 feet underground. The detector consists of a massive calorimeter made up of layers of alternating magnetized steel and plastic plates.

(votes: -1)

AMANDA was an experiment to create a neutrino telescope, looking for neutrinos that come from outside the solar system. It consists of strings of detectors strung like a beaded curtain, running thousands of feet underground, into the antarctic ice. Instead of pointing up at the sky, the telescope points at the center of the earth, detecting extrasolar neutrinos that passed through the north pole.

(votes: -5)

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