DUNE

A mile underground in South Dakota, construction crews have worked diligently to carve out an extensive network of caverns and tunnels that one day will house a huge neutrino experiment. Their efforts have paid off: With almost 400,000 tons of rock extracted from the earth, the excavation has reached the halfway point.

From the Rapid City Journal, Jan. 12, 2023: An interview with Fermilab project manager Joshua Willhite on the excavation of the caverns for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) being built under the Black Hills of South Dakota at SURF. Willhite is a mechanical engineering graduate of the South Dakota Mines university who spoke with him about his love of engineering and how the program at SD Mines led to his work on DUNE. This article is an adaptation of the South Dakota Mines story that published on Jan. 10.

From Virginia Tech, Jan. 4, 2023: Learn more about what researchers from the Virginia Tech Center for Neutrino Physics are contributing to the international DUNE collaboration. The Center is well-known for combining experimental and theoretical physics to study neutrinos as they bump into the argon inside the DUNE detector and leave behind trails of energy.

From the Innovation News Network, Dec. 9, 2022: Learn more about the capabilities of the anode plane assemblies for DUNE’s far detector and the UK’s contributions to the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment in an interview with Justin Evans from the University of Manchester.

Traveling by rail, sea, interstates and shafts, the first components of the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment have arrived at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, South Dakota.

A new 20,000-pound particle detection system built for a neutrino experiment will be transported 3 miles across the Fermilab campus today. About the size of a small house, it will be the heart of the Short-Baseline Near Detector at Fermilab.

While many components of the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment are being developed, international collaborators such as Switzerland are making valuable contributions. Recently, the Swiss state secretary visited Fermilab to discuss DUNE and other joint areas of science research.

Laza Rakotondravohitra was the first Malagasy grad student to conduct research in neutrino physics. He and others are working to ensure he will be far from the last.

From the CERN Courier, November 7, 2022: Fermilab’s Joel Butler and a group of scientists describe the recent ‘Snowmass’ community planning exercise in Seattle, Washington which reveal the great opportunities present in high-energy physics in the coming decades.

From the Black Hills Pioneer, November 12, 2022: How do you fit a 3.5 ton piece of steel that is 6 meters long and 2.5 meters wide safely down the Ross Shaft at Sanford Lab? Justin Evans, a professor at Manchester University, explains how the anode plane assembly traveled from the UK to Lead, SD and its roles as a key component to the DUNE experiment.