Tag: SMU Department of Physics

Categories
Earth & Climate Energy & Matter Researcher news SMU In The News

Daily Mail: Huge 12 billion-year-old explosion in space has been spotted from Earth – and it could reveal secrets of the early universe

Armed with images of the burst, astronomers can now analyze the data in order to understand more about the structure of the universe at its infancy

The U.K.’s widely read newspaper the Daily Mail covered the astronomy research of physicist Robert Kehoe, SMU professor, and two graduate students in the SMU Department of Physics, Farley Ferrante and Govinda Dhungana.

The astronomy team in May reported observation of intense light from the enormous explosion of a star more than 12 billion years ago — shortly after the Big Bang — that recently reached Earth and was visible in the sky.

Known as a gamma-ray burst, light from the rare, high-energy explosion traveled for 12.1 billion years before it was detected and observed by a telescope, ROTSE-IIIb, owned by SMU.
Gamma-ray bursts are believed to be the catastrophic collapse of a star at the end of its life. SMU physicists report that their telescope was the first on the ground to observe the burst and to capture an image.

Recorded as GRB 140419A by NASA’s Gamma-ray Coordinates Network, the burst was spotted at 11 p.m. April 19 by SMU’s robotic telescope at the McDonald Observatory in the Davis Mountains of West Texas.

Daily Mail reporter Jonathan O’Callaghan reported the news in his article “Huge 12 billion-year-old explosion in space has been spotted from Earth – and it could reveal secrets of the early universe.”

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Jonathan O’Callaghan
Daily Mail

One of the biggest and hottest explosions in the universe – a rare event known as a gamma-ray burst (GRB) – has been spotted on camera.

And this particular event, caused by the enormous explosions of a star, occurred shortly after the Big Bang about 12.1 billion years ago.

The intense light recently reached Earth and it could give astronomers useful information about the conditions in the young universe.

Gamma-ray bursts are believed to be the catastrophic collapse of a star at the end of its life.

The observation was made by the telescope Rotse-IIIB at the McDonald Observatory in the Davis Mountains of West Texas, owned by the Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas.

SMU physicists report that their telescope was the first on the ground to observe the burst, and to capture an image.

This particular explosion, first spotted back in April, was recorded as GRB 140419A by Nasa’s Gamma-ray Coordinates Network (GCN).

Gamma-ray bursts are not well understood by astronomers, but they are considered important, according to Farley Ferrante, a graduate student in SMU’s Department of Physics, who monitored the observations along with two astronomers in Turkey and Hawaii.

‘As Nasa points out, gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful explosions in the universe since the Big Bang,’ he said.

‘These bursts release more energy in 10 seconds than our Earth’s sun during its entire expected lifespan of 10 billion years.’

Some of these GRBs appear to be related to supernovae and correspond to the end-of-life of a massive star, said Dr Robert Kehoe, physics professor and leader of the SMU astronomy team.

‘Gamma-ray bursts may be particularly massive cousins to supernovae, or may correspond to cases in which the explosion ejecta are more beamed in our direction. By studying them, we learn about supernovae,’ Kehoe said.

Read the full story.

Categories
Earth & Climate Energy & Matter Slideshows Student researchers

Observed by Texas telescope: Light from huge explosion 12 billion years ago reaches Earth

Known as a gamma-ray burst, the intense light captured in the night sky resulted from one of the biggest and hottest explosions in the universe, occurring shortly after the Big Bang.

Intense light from the enormous explosion of a star more than 12 billion years ago — shortly after the Big Bang — recently reached Earth and was visible in the sky.

Known as a gamma-ray burst, light from the rare, high-energy explosion traveled for 12.1 billion years before it was detected and observed by a telescope, ROTSE-IIIb, owned by Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

Gamma-ray bursts are believed to be the catastrophic collapse of a star at the end of its life. SMU physicists report that their telescope was the first on the ground to observe the burst and to capture an image, said Farley Ferrante, a graduate student in SMU’s Department of Physics, who monitored the observations along with two astronomers in Turkey and Hawaii.

Recorded as GRB 140419A by NASA’s Gamma-ray Coordinates Network, the burst was spotted at 11 p.m. April 19 by SMU’s robotic telescope at the McDonald Observatory in the Davis Mountains of West Texas.

Gamma-ray burst 1404191 was spotted at 11 p.m. on April 19 by SMU's robotic ROTSE-IIIb telescope at McDonald Observatory, Fort Davis, Texas.
Gamma-ray burst 1404191 was spotted at 11 p.m. April 19 by SMU’s robotic ROTSE-IIIb telescope at McDonald Observatory, Fort Davis, Texas.

Gamma-ray bursts are not well understood by astronomers, but they are considered important, Ferrante said.

“As NASA points out, gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful explosions in the universe since the Big Bang,” he said. “These bursts release more energy in 10 seconds than our Earth’s sun during its entire expected lifespan of 10 billion years.”

Some of these gamma-ray bursts appear to be related to supernovae, and correspond to the end-of-life of a massive star, said Robert Kehoe, physics professor and leader of the SMU astronomy team.

“Gamma-ray bursts may be particularly massive cousins to supernovae, or may correspond to cases in which the explosion ejecta are more beamed in our direction. By studying them, we learn about supernovae,” Kehoe said.

Scientists weren’t able to detect optical light from gamma-ray bursts until the late 1990s, when telescope technology improved. Among all lights in the electromagnetic spectrum, gamma rays have the shortest wavelengths and are visible only using special detectors.

Gamma-ray bursts result from hot stars that measure as enormous as 50 solar masses. The explosion occurs when the stars run out of fuel and collapse in on themselves, forming black holes.

The ROTSE-IIIb robotic telescope at McDonald Observatory, Fort Davis, Texas. (Photo: McDonald Observatory)
The ROTSE-IIIb robotic telescope at McDonald Observatory, Fort Davis, Texas. (Photo: McDonald Observatory)

Outer layers detonate, shooting out material along the rotation axis in powerful, high-energy jets that include gamma radiation.

As the gamma radiation declines, the explosion produces an afterglow of visible optical light. The light, in turn, fades very quickly, said Kehoe. Physicists calculate the distance of the explosion based on the shifting wavelength of the light, or redshift.

“The optical light is visible for anywhere from a few seconds to a few hours,” Kehoe said. “Sometimes optical telescopes can capture the spectra. This allows us to calculate the redshift of the light, which tells us how fast the light is moving away from us. This is an indirect indication of the distance from us.”

Observational data from gamma-ray bursts allows scientists to understand structure of the early universe
To put into context the age of the new gamma-ray burst discoveries, Kehoe and Ferrante point out that the Big Bang occurred 13.81 billion years ago. GRB 140419A is at a red shift of 3.96, Ferrante said.

“That means that GRB 140419A exploded about 12.1 billion years ago,” he said, “which is only about one-and-a-half billion years after the universe began. That is really old.”

Armed with images of the burst, astronomers can analyze the observational data to draw further conclusions about the structure of the early universe.

“At the time of this gamma-ray burst’s explosion, the universe looked vastly different than it does now,” Kehoe said. “It was an early stage of galaxy formation. There weren’t heavy elements to make Earth-like planets. So this is a glimpse at the early universe. Observing gamma-ray bursts is important for gaining information about the early universe.”

GRB 140419A’s brightness, measured by its ability to be seen by someone on Earth, was of the 12th magnitude, Kehoe said, indicating it was only 10 times dimmer than what is visible through binoculars, and only 200 times dimmer than the human eye can see, Kehoe said.

“The difference in brightness is about the same as between the brightest star you can see in the sky, and the dimmest you can see with the naked eye on a clear, dark night,” Kehoe said. “Considering this thing was at the edge of the visible universe, that’s an extreme explosion. That was something big. Really big.”

SMU telescope responded to NASA satellite’s detection and notification
SMU’s Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment (ROTSE) IIIb is a robotic telescope. It is part of a network of ground telescopes responsive to a NASA satellite that is central to the space agency’s Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission. Images of the gamma-ray bursts are at http://bit.ly/1kKZeh5.

When the Swift satellite detects a gamma-ray burst, it instantly relays the location. Telescopes around the world, such as SMU’s ROTSE-IIIb, swing into action to observe the burst’s afterglow and capture images, said Govinda Dhungana, an SMU graduate student who participated in the gamma-ray burst research.

SMU’s ROTSE-IIIb observes optical emission from several gamma-ray bursts each year. It observed GRB 140419A just 55 seconds after the burst was detected by Swift.

Just days later, ROTSE-IIIb observed and reported a second rare and distant gamma-ray burst, GRB 140423A, at 3:30 a.m. April 23. The redshift of that burst corresponds to a look back in time of 11.8 billion years. ROTSE-IIIb observed it 51 seconds after the burst was detected by Swift.

“We have the brightest detection and the earliest response on both of those because our telescope is fully robotic and no human hands were involved,” Ferrante said.

Ferrante, the first to check observations on GRB 140423A, is first-author on that gamma-ray burst. Tolga Guver, associate professor in the Department of Astronomy and Space Sciences at Istanbul University, Turkey, is second author. On GRB 140419A, Guver is first author and Ferrante is second.

The research is funded by the Texas Space Grant Consortium, an affiliate of NASA. — Margaret Allen

Categories
Energy & Matter Researcher news

Search for dark matter covers new ground with CDMS experiment in Minnesota

Scientists report the Cryogenic Dark Matter Experiment has set more stringent limits on light dark matter

CDMS Dark matter, Jodi Cooley, SMU

Book a live interview

jodi_smu.jpg

To book a live or taped interview with Dr. Jodi Cooley in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call SMU News at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu.

Related links

More SMU Research news

Neutrino, SMU, Thomas Coan, NOvANOvA experiment glimpses neutrinos, one of nature’s most abundant, and elusive particles
NetQuakes, Azle, SMU, fracking, studySMU scientists to deploy seismic monitors in North Texas region near Azle, Texas
Holden, spanking, SMUParents less likely to spank after reading briefly about its links to problems in children
Financial crisis headlinesWall Street’s short sellers wrongly maligned — detected red flags ahead of US financial crisis
Linck, SMU, director's skills, compensation, businessA director’s skills, experiences and workload drive their compensation, SMU study finds
Meltzer marital happiness gut reactionGut reaction of marital partners could foretell their marriage satisfaction
Sessia Valley geopark UNESCOFossil supervolcano discovered in Italy by SMU-led team is now key feature of new UNESCO Geopark
SMU geothermal 150x120NPR: “Boiling Hot: How Fracking’s Gusher of Geothermal Energy is Wasted”
Weyand-150x120KERA, NOVA: SMU researcher Peter Weyand discusses the upper limits of human speed.
Stock photo of man listening to an MPG player on green grassThe Undying Radio: Familiarity breeds content when it comes to listeners and music

Scientists hunting for dark matter announced Friday they’ve now been able to probe the dark matter mass and cross section in a region that no other experiment has been able to explore.

Dark matter has never been detected, but scientists believe it constitutes a large part of our universe. Key to finding dark matter is determining its mass, or the volume of matter it contains.

On Friday, scientists with CDMS, a dark matter experiment that operates a particle detector in an abandoned underground mine in northern Minnesota, said they’ve narrowed the possibilities for dark matter’s mass.

The CDMS experiment searches for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, which some physicists theorize constitutes dark matter. WIMPS are particles of such low mass that they rarely interact with ordinary matter, making them extremely difficult to detect, said physicist Jodi Cooley, an assistant professor in the Department of Physics at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, and a member of the experiment.

CDMS scientists say they’ve narrowed the range of measurements in which dark matter’s mass might occur.

“This new result is sensitive to WIMPs of lower mass than previous experiments have been able to attempt to measure,” Cooley said.

The result, however, conflicts with results from another experiment that is also hunting for dark matter. A handful of experiments around the world are using different techniques to solve the question.

“It’s not enough for one technique and one experiment to say they’ve made a discovery. It always has to be verified and looked at by another experiment, independently, with a different technique,” Cooley said. “If different techniques and different instruments prove the finding, then you can have a lot more confidence in the result.”

SMU graduate student Bedile Kara worked on the CDMS analysis. Kara performed the data processing and developed data quality and particle identification criteria used for the result.

Dark matter makes up the bulk of the universe, but know one has seen it
Scientists looking for dark matter face a serious challenge: No one knows what dark matter particles look like. So their search covers a wide range of possible traits — different masses, different probabilities of interacting with regular matter.

Scientists on the CDMS, which stands for Cryogenic Dark Matter Search, announced they have shifted the border of the search down to a dark-matter particle mass and rate of interaction that has never been probed.

“We’re pushing CDMS to as low mass as we can,” says physicist Dan Bauer, the project manager for CDMS at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory near Chicago. “We’re proving the particle detector technology here.”

The CDMS result does not claim any hints of dark matter particles. But it contradicts a result announced in January by another dark matter experiment, CoGeNT, which uses particle detectors made of germanium, the same detector material used by CDMS.

To search for dark matter, CDMS scientists cool their detectors to very low temperatures to detect the very small energies deposited by the collisions of dark matter particles with the germanium. They operate their detectors half a mile underground in an abandoned iron ore mine in northern Minnesota. The mine provides shielding from cosmic rays that could clutter the detector as it waits for passing dark matter particles.

Dark matter experiments attempt to understand dark matter despite background noise
Friday’s result carves out interesting new dark matter territory for masses below six GeV, a unit of energy for measuring subatomic particles. The dark matter experiment Large Underground Xenon, or LUX, recently ruled out a wide range of masses and interaction rates above that with the announcement of its first result in October 2013.

Scientists have expressed an increasing amount of interest of late in the search for low-mass dark matter particles, with CDMS and three other experiments — DAMA, CoGeNT and CRESST — all finding their data compatible with the existence of dark matter particles between five and 20 GeV. But such light dark-matter particles are hard to pin down. The lower the mass of the dark-matter particles, the less energy they leave in detectors, and the more likely it is that background noise will drown out any signals.

Even more confounding is the fact that scientists don’t know whether dark matter particles interact in the same way in detectors built with different materials to search for dark matter in more than a dozen experiments around the world.

“It’s important to look in as many materials as possible to try to understand whether dark matter interacts in this more complicated way,” says Adam Anderson, a graduate student at MIT who worked on the latest CDMS analysis as part of his thesis. “Some materials might have very weak interactions. If you only picked one, you might miss it.”

Scientists around the world seem to be taking that advice, building different types of detectors and constantly improving their methods.

“Progress is extremely fast,” Anderson says. “The sensitivity of these experiments is increasing by an order of magnitude every few years.”

Elusive dark matter — the “glue” that represents 85 percent of the matter in our universe — has never been observed. Cooley in 2012 was recognized by the National Science Foundation with its prestigious Faculty Early Career Development Award. The NSF awarded Cooley a 5-year, $1 million research grant toward her CDMS dark matter research. — Margaret Allen, SMU, and Kathryn Jepsen, Fermilab

Follow SMUResearch.com on Twitter.

For more information, www.smuresearch.com.

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

Categories
Earth & Climate Energy & Matter Researcher news SMU In The News

SMU Daily Campus: Navigating neutrinos — Professor studies most elusive particle in the universe

Thomas Coan, an associate professor in the SMU Department of Physics, works with more than 200 scientists around the world to study one of the universe's most elusive particles — the neutrino. (Photo: Ellen Smith, The Daily Campus)
Thomas Coan, an associate professor in the SMU Department of Physics, works with more than 200 scientists around the world to study one of the universe’s most elusive particles — the neutrino.
(Photo: Ellen Smith, The Daily Campus)

Book a live interview

Tom Coan SMU

To book a live or taped interview with Dr. Thomas E. Coan in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call SMU News at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu.

Related Links

More SMU Research news

Financial crisis headlinesWall Street’s short sellers wrongly maligned — detected red flags ahead of US financial crisis
Linck, SMU, director's skills, compensation, businessA director’s skills, experiences and workload drive their compensation, SMU study finds
Meltzer marital happiness gut reactionGut reaction of marital partners could foretell their marriage satisfaction

Journalist Lauren Aguirre of the SMU Daily Campus covered the research of SMU physicist Thomas E. Coan, an associate professor in the SMU Department of Physics.

Coan collaborates with more than 200 scientists around the world to study one of the universe’s most elusive particles — the neutrino.

Neutrinos could yield crucial information about the early moments of the universe, according to Coan and other scientists on the NOvA experiment, which will gather data from a detector in Minnesota.

“Neutrinos are fascinating. They are, besides light, the most numerous particle in the universe yet are notoriously difficult to study since they interact with the rest of matter so feebly,” he said. “Produced in many venues, from laboratories to stars and even bones, they may be their own anti-particles and perhaps play a key role in explaining why any matter at all exists today and survived annihilation with its sister anti-matter produced all the way back in the Big Bang, many billions of years ago.”

The NUMI Off-Axis electron neutrino Appearance, or NOvA, is the world’s longest-distance neutrino experiment. It consists of two huge particle detectors placed 500 miles apart, and its job is to explore the properties of an intense beam of neutrinos.

The Daily Campus article published Feb. 27, “Navigating neutrinos: Professor studies most elusive particle in the universe.”

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Lauren Aguirre
The Daily Campus
Thomas Coan, an associate professor in the SMU Department of Physics, is working with over 200 scientists from around the world to study one of the universe’s most elusive particles — the neutrino.

Neutrinos are one of the most abundant particles in the universe, but are hard to detect because they rarely interact with other particles. The NuMI Off-Axis electron neutrino Appearance, or NOvA, experiment may explain the makeup of the universe.

“Neutrinos play a key role in explaining why anti-matter still exists,” Coan said.

Anti-matter are particles that have the same mass as ordinary matter people are familiar with, but anti-matter has opposite charges. When matter and anti-matter collide, they annihilate each other. According to the NOvA experiment website, studying neutrinos can help explain why the universe has more matter than anti-matter. Because humans are made of regular matter, understanding the balance between these two particles can explain why humans exist.

“By understanding these fundamental questions, we can get down to the fundamental levels of how the universe works,” said Brian Rebel, a staff scientist at Fermilab, the organization that is managing NOvA.

Coan started working at SMU in 1994 and joined the NOvA collaboration in 2005.

Read the full story.

Follow SMUResearch.com on Twitter.

For more information, www.smuresearch.com.

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

Categories
Earth & Climate Energy & Matter Researcher news Videos

NOvA experiment glimpses neutrinos, one of nature’s most abundant, and elusive particles

Ghostly particles that constantly bombard us can offer clues to the early moments of our universe

Scientists hunting one of nature’s most elusive, yet abundant, elementary particles announced today they’ve succeeded in their first efforts to glimpse neutrinos using a detector in Minnesota.

Neutrinos are generated in nature through the decay of radioactive elements and from high-energy collisions between fundamental particles, such as in the Big Bang that ignited the universe.

Light and ghostly, however, they are unaffected by magnetic fields and travel at the speed of light.

The neutrinos that currently bombard the earth from space are mostly produced by the nuclear reactions that power our sun.

More than 200 physicists from around the world collaborate on the massive neutrino experiment called NOvA, which has taken a decade to design and build.

Their goal is to discover more details about neutrinos, which were theorized in 1930 and first observed in 1956.

The NOvA detector viewed from Google earth
The NOvA detector viewed from Google earth. Click to enlarge.

Book a live interview

Tom Coan SMU

To book a live or taped interview with Dr. Thomas E. Coan in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call SMU News at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu.

Related Links

More SMU Research news

Financial crisis headlinesWall Street’s short sellers wrongly maligned — detected red flags ahead of US financial crisis
Linck, SMU, director's skills, compensation, businessA director’s skills, experiences and workload drive their compensation, SMU study finds
Meltzer marital happiness gut reactionGut reaction of marital partners could foretell their marriage satisfaction
Sessia Valley geopark UNESCOFossil supervolcano discovered in Italy by SMU-led team is now key feature of new UNESCO Geopark
SMU geothermal 150x120NPR: “Boiling Hot: How Fracking’s Gusher of Geothermal Energy is Wasted”
Weyand-150x120KERA, NOVA: SMU researcher Peter Weyand discusses the upper limits of human speed.
Stock photo of man listening to an MPG player on green grassThe Undying Radio: Familiarity breeds content when it comes to listeners and music
Mosquito biting 150x120Mosquito indexing system identifies best time to act against potential West Nile Virus outbreaks

“These first few neutrino events are a confirmation that NOvA’s basic detector design and construction that dozens of people have worked on for a good fraction of a decade are sound,” said Thomas E. Coan, an associate professor in the SMU Department of Physics, who is a researcher in the NOvA collaboration.

Studying neutrinos could yield crucial information about the early moments of the universe, Coan said.

“Neutrinos are fascinating. They are, besides light, the most numerous particle in the universe yet are notoriously difficult to study since they interact with the rest of matter so feebly,” he said. “Produced in many venues, from laboratories to stars and even bones, they may be their own anti-particles and perhaps play a key role in explaining why any matter at all exists today and survived annihilation with its sister anti-matter produced all the way back in the Big Bang, many billions of years ago.”

NOvA is the world’s longest-distance neutrino experiment
The NUMI Off-Axis electron neutrino Appearance, or NOvA, is the world’s longest-distance neutrino experiment. It consists of two huge particle detectors placed 500 miles apart, and its job is to explore the properties of an intense beam of neutrinos.

“NOvA represents a new generation of neutrino experiments,” said Fermilab Director Nigel Lockyer. “We are proud to reach this important milestone on our way to learning more about these fundamental particles.”

Scientists generate a beam of the particles for the NOvA experiment using one of the world’s largest accelerators, located at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago. They aim this beam in the direction of the two particle detectors, one near the source at Fermilab and the other in Ash River, Minn., near the Canadian border. The detector in Ash River is operated by the University of Minnesota under a cooperative agreement with the Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

Billions of those particles are sent through the earth every two seconds, aimed at the massive detectors. Once the experiment is fully operational, scientists will catch a precious few each day.

“It is both intellectually and emotionally satisfying,” said SMU’s Coan, “akin to a great adventure, to be detecting neutrinos in Northern Minnesota that are produced some 500 miles to the south at Fermi National Laboratory near Chicago, after making thousands of engineering and scientific decisions that had to be spot-on to see these events.”

Scientists will use NOvA to understand three changing flavors of neutrinos
Neutrinos are curious particles. They come in three types, called flavors, and change between them as they travel. The two detectors of the NOvA experiment are placed so far apart to give the neutrinos the time to oscillate from one flavor to another while traveling at nearly the speed of light. Even though only a fraction of the experiment’s larger detector, called the far detector, is fully built, filled with scintillator and wired with electronics at this point, the experiment has already used it to record signals from its first neutrinos.

“That the first neutrinos have been detected even before the NOvA far detector installation is complete is a real tribute to everyone involved,” said University of Minnesota physicist Marvin Marshak, Ash River Laboratory director. “This early result suggests that the NOvA collaboration will make important contributions to our knowledge of these particles in the not so distant future.”

Once completed, NOvA’s near and far detectors will weigh 300 and 14,000 tons, respectively. Crews will put into place the last module of the far detector early this spring and will finish outfitting both detectors with electronics in the summer.

The NOvA collaboration is made up of 208 scientists from 38 institutions in the United States, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Greece, India, Russia and the United Kingdom. The experiment receives funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation and other funding agencies.

The NOvA experiment is scheduled to run for six years. Because neutrinos interact with matter so rarely, scientists expect to catch just about 5,000 neutrinos or antineutrinos during that time. Scientists can study the timing, direction and energy of the particles that interact in their detectors to determine whether they came from Fermilab or elsewhere.

“Seeing neutrinos in the first modules of the detector in Minnesota is a major milestone”
Fermilab creates a beam of neutrinos by smashing protons into a graphite target, which releases a variety of particles. Scientists use magnets to steer the charged particles that emerge from the energy of the collision into a beam. Some of those particles decay into neutrinos, and the scientists filter the non-neutrinos from the beam.

Fermilab started sending a beam of neutrinos through the detectors in September, after 16 months of work by about 300 people to upgrade the lab’s accelerator complex.

Different types of neutrinos have different masses, but scientists do not know how these masses compare to one another. A goal of the NOvA experiment is to determine the order of the neutrino masses, known as the mass hierarchy, which will help scientists narrow their list of possible theories about how neutrinos work.

“Seeing neutrinos in the first modules of the detector in Minnesota is a major milestone,” said Fermilab physicist Rick Tesarek, deputy project leader for NOvA. “Now we can start doing physics.” — Andre Salles, Fermilab, and Margaret Allen, SMU

Follow SMUResearch.com on Twitter.

For more information, www.smuresearch.com.

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.