Scientists working on the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment are developing a vertical drift detector. The new technology may open doors to building large neutrino detectors at a lower cost and in a simpler manner.
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The international DUNE collaboration is conducting final tests of the components for its first neutrino detector module, to be installed a mile underground in South Dakota. Preparations for ramping up the mass production of these components are underway.
From Bioengineer.org, March 21, 2023: Congratulations to Mary Bishai, distinguished scientist from Brookhaven National Laboratory, who has been elected co-spokesperson of the international project DUNE. Bishai began working on DUNE in 2012 and will lead DUNE’s 1,400-member international collaboration alongside Sergio Bertolucci, a physics professor at the University of Bologna.
The SBND collaboration added the cryostat top cap to the neutrino detector.
From Scientific American, March 16, 2023: Big news about a smaller size: MINERvA researchers used a new and entirely independent method to measure a proton’s radius. The team’s measurement of the proton’s radius was 0.73 femtometer, even smaller than the 0.84-femtometer electric charge radius. In either case, it is almost 10,000 times smaller than a hydrogen atom.
The quest to understand the small mass of neutrinos is also a quest to discover new particles.
Most astronomers trek to the mountaintops to study the stars, but a group of physicists are seeking the secrets of the cosmos with a detector at the bottom of the ocean.
From Science Daily, Feb. 1, 2023: Yesterday, Nature posted new research which used a beam of neutrinos for the first time to investigate the structure of protons. With Fermilab’s MINERvA detector, scientists were able to precisely measure the proton’s size and structure using neutrinos with data gathered from thousands of neutrino-hydrogen scattering events.
For the first time, particle physicists have been able to precisely measure the proton’s size and structure using neutrinos with data gathered from thousands of neutrino-hydrogen scattering events collected by MINERvA, a particle physics experiment at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.
For decades, scientists have tried to find a way to measure the mass of the lightest matter particle known to exist. Three new approaches now have a chance to succeed.