Main Injector Neutrino oscillation Search (MINOS) -- Very interesting!

In north east Minnesota, the iron range, there is an underground mine that is being used as a labratory. Part of the mine anyway. This lab is about ha half mile into the earth. The reason the lab is this far down in the earth is to protect the equipment from cosmic rays.

In this lab there is a 6,000 steel dector will be searching for neutrinos sent from a particle accelerator 450 miles away in Chicago, this is also underground. There is no tunnel or opening in the ground for these subatomic particles. They rarely ever interact with matter. In one cubic foot there are 10 million neutrinos.

Below are some links that are related to this research and about neutrinos. Apparently there are other labs and detectors under water, and in the south pole. i have not read anything on these though. Feel free to post any other links or information you have about this.


Links Regarding This Research:

www-numi.fnal.gov -- MINOS Official Government Website
www.soudan.umn.edu -- Soudan Underground Labratory Website (Hosted by the University of MN)
www.fnal.gov -- Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory Official Website
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrinos -- Wikipedia''s information on Neutrinos

[edit on 7/25/05 by flipjargendy]

Yep! It's pretty cool stuff. Here's an article I wrote back in April on their test they ran in March.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Despite what i've read on this i still haven't found out one thing.

What use would we have with knowing anything about them? The only thing i could think of is that they could use these as some sort of communications media. They'd have to figure out how to, i suppose you could say, catch them better. Maybe it could be used to communicate with or send data to and from deep in space. Although particle accelerators would need to get smaller too. So this idea is very, very, very, very far off in the future or not ever going to happen.

What do you think the uses would be with information they gather about these particles?

The purpose is to divine the nature of sub atomic physics. We know so little and this type of research can help us to better understand the way the universe works. Comunication.... I don't think so.. its not very practical.