neutrinos

Digging into neutrino research

Now that the excavation of 800,000 tons of rock from the Sanford Underground Research Facility is complete, LBNF-DUNE teams are working on the the far detector in South Dakota and the near detector at Fermilab in Illinois. The science collaboration includes more than 35 countries and DOE’s Office of Science is supporting the LBNF-DUNE to help answer some of physics’ biggest questions.

The 2×2 detector has captured its first neutrino interactions at Fermilab with help from scientists at SLAC. The prototype neutrino detector will help fine-tune a full-size version of the DUNE Near Detector Liquid Argon detector and will capture up to 10,000 neutrino interactions per day.

After years of preparation, the first neutrinos have been observed by the Short-Baseline Near Detector collaboration. The data SBND collects will expand our knowledge of how neutrinos interact with matter and will be used to search for evidence of new physics.

The New York Times reports on LBNF/DUNE. When DUNE operations begin, the research results could a major gap in scientists’ understanding of the universe and return the United States to its former position at the center of particle physics.