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SuperK Neutrino Detector Severely Damaged.
Eric Sharkey writes "The Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector, which announced the discovery of neutrino oscillation and mass in 1998 (covered by Slashdot at the time), has been severely damaged. The NY Times (free reg, blah blah) has an article here. Most of the phototubes have been destroyed. Repair estimates top $30M, leaving the world far less capable of observing the next supernova neutrino burst, should it arrive before repairs or a replacement could be completed." CD: I called the lead of the project and he was in the tank checking out the damage. The webpage for the Super-Kamiokande is here. There are pictures for you to peruse.
Of course this is just wild speculation, but...
A couple of Japanese colleges say that SuperK was previously being targeted for budget cuts, and was fighting to maintain funding. They were concerned that if it would indeed take tens of millions of USDs to fix, then it may be cut. That would be a real dissappiontment.
Let's hope SuperK comes back on line, and that we don't have a galactic supernova go off while SuperK is being fixed.
Seems strange that the article was so sketchy on why the damage was done. They sort of implied that the tank got overfilled, but then again they really avoided saying anything.
Why would a research instution hide the reason for the damage, afraid that they are going to cripple someone's career? It certainly is a tragedy, but the fact that they are not disclosing the real reason for the damage makes it more interesting somehow.
Thumbs up for cool Neutrino detectors though, it has been an unexplained scientific phenomena for a long time now. I hope they can fix it (and have the $$ too).
Brett
__ No registration required to read this message. They did it in the Matrix.
While the accident is a tragic blow to some valid and interesting research, no one should lose any sleep over the possibility of being unable to analyze the next big supernova before it can be repaired. After all, supernovae on the scale of SN1987A occur once every few hundred years (the last two occurred in 1054 and 1572.) I suspect repairing Super-K will take significantly faster than that.
Even in the minuscule chance that a big supernova will occur in the meantime, Super-K isn't the only neutrino observatory around. The Sudsbury Neutrino Observatory, a similar experiment, is online and producing some very good results.
One of my colleagues used to work at Fermi Lab and he mentioned once that the light sensors that were damaged are extremely sensitive to saline solutions (such as water that has any appreciable amount of non-neutral-pH molecules). His speculation was that the deionized water that they were using had developed impurities in it, possibly from rusting pipes or failed filters, and those impurities set off the chain reaction in question.
Naturally this is all speculation, but it sounded plausible to me. Does anyone with a stronger chemistry background than mine know if this is a likely cause?
-sting3r
Allrighty, step right up and pick the punchline that best matches this story:
#1: These photos are fake!! Theyre from the inside of Studio 54!! Look up in the balcony in the 4th image, you can see Liza Minelli smokin a bong!
#2: It should be easy to build another Super K detector. Just look for trailer parks...Super K's tend to spring up in low-income areas where Wal-Mart hasn't already established a commercial presence..
#3: So SuperK is handicapped...Does that make it "Special K" ?
hee hee
Bowie J. Poag
Nov 12, 2050,
Scientists working with Japan's Super-Duper-Kamiokande anounce that they have lost containment on a micro black hole.
Apparently, an undergrad triped over the power cable.
Officials tell us that there is no need to panic. The mini black hole plunged straight to the center of the earth.
Happily, it will feed on the other mini black hole that was created when the first copy of Windows 2047 was burned onto CD and collapsed on its own data mass -- it was thought at the time that the universe was acting to protect both itself and the second law of Thermodynamics from Windows 2047's immense entropic mass.
There is some speculation that the black hole could actually provide enough energy to run Windows 2047, but Physicists are highly dubious.
Bakhrubabad, Afghanistan - Speaking from his hidden mountain stronghold, Osama bin Laden praised the destruction of the Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector Tuesday. The terrorist leader said neutrinos are "...an abomination on the face of God," and termed the search for neutrinos "...idolatry, which will be smashed beneath the fist of righteousness." Bin Laden, who once called neutrinos "little messengers of Allah" abruptly reversed his stand upon learning that a steady stream of neutrinos was constantly penetrating every cell in his body. He now vows "not to rest until the last neutrino has been obliterated from the face of the earth."
The FBI is warning again that a supernova may explode and send a massive number of energetic neutrinos toward U.S. interests worldwide, possibly this week, and that the world's neutrino telescopes should be on the highest alert.
Attorney General John Ashcroft said the warning -- the second this month -- was based on credible information, described by others as coming from sources outside the solar system. The information did not specify the type of supernova or whether the progenitor star would have a binary companion, Ashcroft said.
Ashcroft tried to walk a fine line between giving the public prompt and necessary warnings and not causing panic.
The alert "gives people a basis for continuing to live their lives the way they would otherwise live them, with this elevated sense of alertness or vigilance that comes from knowing that the planet could be vaporized any second," Ashcroft told a news conference.
FBI Director Robert Mueller said the previous supernova warning may have helped avert an explosion. Ashcroft said the absence of a supernova should not lull people "into a false sense of indifference."
"It's important for the American people to understand that these (alerts) are to be taken seriously," said Ashcroft, who canceled plans to travel Monday to Toronto to address a conference of near-earth asteroid experts.
Officials said the warning was based in part on intelligence that terrorists may set off a supernova within 1000 light years of the earth, in the aftermath of the Afghan bombings by U.S. and British forces.
"There certainly is intelligence that causes you to be concerned, and possibly that al-Qaida may be behind it," said one senior U.S. official, speaking only on condition of anonymity.
Ashcroft said that all neutrino observatories were advised to go on the highest alert. Federal agencies, meanwhile, were increasing security and authorities were boosting their efforts to keep suspected neutrinos from entering U.S. airspace- either by coming down from above or by emerging from the ground after a trip through the center of the earth.
Right, pressure: a bulb imploding under a significant depth of water (say, at the bottom of the tank, I doubt it is artificially pressurised in any way, the volume would be too large for that to be an economically feasible structure) will create a shockwave within the water - which may have enough energy in turn to cause a neighbouring bulb to implode, etc, etc, bringing about a cascade failure of the bulbs.
Which is why deep water divers have to be carefull with their lights while working under pressure - if one implodes, the shockwave is like a small bomb going off. Remember, water is much more dense than air, any shockwaves will have significantly more energy, particularly at a depth of 40 meters.
All it would take is for one bulb to be broken somewhere in the depths of the tank (through physical impact or corrosion, etc) to set off a large number of them. Despite it's size, these are delicate instruments.
Just a rational, educated guess.
...have no charge and no mass...
No charge - correct. However, as the article mentions, recent experiments indicate that neutrinos have some mass. They also have spin 1/2, like electrons.
are very fast
This is related to mass. If they had zero mass, they would travel at the speed of light (like photons, which have no rest mass). However, if they do have mass, then they have to travel at slightly less than the speed of light.
Supernova observations can be used to estimate neutrino mass, by measuring the time difference between the arrival of visible light from the supernova, and the arrival of a neutrino pulse. Over those vast distances, even a very small difference in speed could lead to a significant difference in arrival times.
and pass through the planet so fast most detection has to be done underground...
This is a bit off. The interesting item is that most neutrinos pass right through the planet without interacting with any atoms. Because they interact so weakly with matter, a detector will only see a very small number of events caused by neutrinos, even though there are bazillions of neutrinos passing through it every second.
However, a detector on the surface of the earth would also see events not from neutrinos, but from other cosmic radiation like muons (actually, muons generated in the upper atmosphere by cosmic radiation). Going deep underground blocks out all particles except neutrinos, enabling the experimenters to get accurate measurements.
Tom.
Oh arse
Bill: "I'm Bill S. Preston, Esquire."
Ted: "And I'm Ted "Theodore" Logan."
Bill, Ted: "And together, we're WYLD PHYSICISTS!"
Bill: "Ok, the maintenance dudes are done. I'm gonna refill the water tank."
<cacophony of pops as the light detectors implode>
Ted: "Strange things are afoot at the Super-K."
Rufus: [reassuringly to the camera]: "They do get better."
~Philly