Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO)
An astronomical neutrino observatory the
size of a 10-storey building, 2 km underground, in the deepest section of
the Creighton Mine near Sudbury, Ontario; SNO is an international collaboration
of scientists from Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. The
SNO detector consists of 1,000 tons of ultrapure heavy water (water in which
the hydrogen atom in the water molecule has an extra neutron), enclosed
in a 12-meter-diameter acrylic-plastic vessel, which in turn is surrounded
by ultrapure ordinary water in a giant 22-m-diameter by 34-meter-high cavity.
Outside the acrylic vessel is a 17-meter-diameter geodesic sphere containing
9,600 photomultiplier tubes, which detect tiny flashes of light emitted
as neutrinos are stopped or scattered in the heavy water. At a detection
rate of about one neutrino per hour, many days of operation are required
to provide sufficient data for a complete analysis. Because SNO uses heavy
water, it is able to detect not only electron-neutrinos through one type
of reaction, but also all three known neutrino types through a different
reaction.
Related category
• OBSERVATORIES
AND TELESCOPES
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