{"id":15901,"date":"2018-09-23T09:57:09","date_gmt":"2018-09-23T09:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/?p=15901"},"modified":"2020-06-09T12:51:16","modified_gmt":"2020-06-09T12:51:16","slug":"first-particle-tracks-seen-in-prototype-for-international-neutrino-experiment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/first-particle-tracks-seen-in-prototype-for-international-neutrino-experiment\/","title":{"rendered":"First particle tracks seen in prototype for international neutrino experiment"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"Geneva–The largest liquid-argon neutrino detector in the world has just recorded its first particle tracks, signaling the start of a new chapter in the story of the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE)<\/a>.<\/span><\/div>\n
\n

DUNE\u2019s scientific mission is dedicated to unlocking the mysteries of neutrinos, the most abundant (and most mysterious) matter particles in the universe. Neutrinos are all around us, but we know very little about them. Scientists on the DUNE collaboration think that neutrinos may help answer one of the most pressing questions in physics: why we live in a universe dominated by matter. In other words, why we are here at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

The enormous ProtoDUNE detector \u2013 the size of a three-story house and the shape of a gigantic cube \u2013 was built at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, as the first of two prototypes for what will be a much, much larger detector for the DUNE project, hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy\u2019s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in the United States. When the first DUNE detector modules record data in 2026, they will each be 20 times larger than these prototypes.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is the first time CERN is investing in infrastructure and detector development for a particle physics project in the United States.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first ProtoDUNE detector took two years to build and eight weeks to fill with 800 tons of liquid argon, which needs to be kept at temperatures below -184 degrees Celsius (-300 degrees Fahrenheit). The detector records traces of particles in that argon, from both cosmic rays and a beam created at CERN\u2019s accelerator complex. Now that the first tracks have been seen, scientists will operate the detector over the next several months to test the technology in depth.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOnly two years ago we completed the new building at CERN to house two large-scale prototype detectors that form the building blocks for DUNE,\u201d<\/span><\/em>\u00a0said Marzio Nessi, head of the Neutrino Platform at CERN.\u00a0\u201cNow we have the first detector taking beautiful data, and the second detector, which uses a different approach to liquid-argon technology, will be online in a few months.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The technology of the first ProtoDUNE detector will be the same to be used for the first of the DUNE detector modules in the United States, which will be built a mile underground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota. More than 1,000 scientists and engineers from 32 countries spanning five continents \u2013 Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America \u2013 are working on the development, design and construction of the DUNE detectors. The groundbreaking ceremony for the caverns that will house the experiment was held in July of 2017.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSeeing the first particle tracks is a major success for the entire DUNE collaboration,\u201d<\/span><\/em>\u00a0said DUNE co-spokesperson Stefan Soldner-Rembold of the University of Manchester, UK.\u00a0\u201cDUNE is the largest collaboration of scientists working on neutrino research in the world, with the intention of creating a cutting-edge experiment that could change the way we see the universe.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

When neutrinos enter the detectors and smash into the argon nuclei, they produce charged particles. Those particles leave ionization traces in the liquid, which can be seen by sophisticated tracking systems able to create three-dimensional pictures of otherwise invisible subatomic processes. (An animation of how the DUNE and ProtoDUNE detectors work, along with other videos about DUNE,\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Picture1.png\"<\/span><\/p>\n

This image shows one of the first cosmic-muon particle tracks recorded by the ProtoDUNE detector at CERN. Three wire planes, each of which is made up of thousands of individual wires, recorded the signal of the muon as it travelled approximately 3.8 metres through liquid argon in the detector, and the images together give scientists a three-dimensional picture of the particle’s path. Image: DUNE collaboration.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCERN is proud of the success of the Neutrino Platform and enthusiastic about being a partner in DUNE, together with Institutions and Universities from its Member States and beyond\u201d<\/span><\/em>\u00a0said Fabiola Gianotti, Director-General of CERN.\u00a0\u201cThese first results from ProtoDUNE are a nice example of what can be achieved when laboratories across the world collaborate. Research with DUNE is complementary to research carried out by the LHC and other experiments at CERN; together they hold great potential to answer some of the outstanding questions in particle physics today.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

DUNE will not only study neutrinos, but their antimatter counterparts as well. Scientists will look for differences in behavior between neutrinos and antineutrinos, which could give us clues as to why the visible universe is dominated by matter. DUNE will also watch for neutrinos produced when a star explodes, which could reveal the formation of neutron stars and black holes, and will investigate whether protons live forever or eventually decay. Observing proton decay would bring us closer to fulfilling Einstein\u2019s dream of a grand unified theory.<\/span><\/p>\n

\ufeff<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Geneva–The largest liquid-argon neutrino detector in the world has just recorded its first particle tracks, signaling the start of a new chapter in the story of the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15902,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/proto-dune.jpg",1440,961,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/proto-dune-200x200.jpg",200,200,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/proto-dune-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/proto-dune-768x513.jpg",750,501,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/proto-dune-1024x683.jpg",750,500,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/proto-dune.jpg",1440,961,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/proto-dune.jpg",1440,961,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/proto-dune.jpg",1200,800,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/proto-dune.jpg",854,570,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/proto-dune.jpg",600,400,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/proto-dune.jpg",600,400,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/proto-dune.jpg",734,490,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/proto-dune.jpg",539,360,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/proto-dune.jpg",95,63,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/proto-dune.jpg",640,427,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/proto-dune.jpg",96,64,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/proto-dune.jpg",150,100,false]},"author_info":{"info":["RevoScience"]},"category_info":"Research<\/a>","tag_info":"Research","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}