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- The Super-Kamiokande Neutrino Detector is a physics experiment the size of a 15-story building, buried under a mountain in Japan.
- Neutrinos are subatomic particles that go through us all the time, and their study can tell us about supernovae and the composition of the universe.
- The detector is full of ultra-pure water, which can leach the nutrients in your hair and dissolve the metal.
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Hidden 1000 meters under Mount Ikeno in Japan is a place that looks like a supervillain dream.
Super-Kamiokande (or "Super-K" as it is sometimes called) is a neutrino detector. Neutrinos are subatomic particles that cross the space and cross the solid as if it were air.
The study of these particles helps scientists detect dying stars and learn more about the universe. Business Insider spoke to three scientists about how the giant gold chamber works – and the dangers of conducting experiments inside.
See the subatomic world
Neutrinos can be very difficult to detect, so Neil deGrasse has dubbed them "the most elusive prey of the cosmos". In this video, he explains that the detection chamber is buried deep in the earth to prevent other particles from entering.
"The material does not pose any obstacle to a neutrino," he says. "A neutrino could go through a hundred light years of steel without even slowing down."
But why catch them at all?
"There is a supernova, a star that collapses and turns into a black hole," said Dr. Yoshi Uchida of Imperial College London at Business Insider. "If this happens in our galaxy, something like Super-K is one of the very few objects that can see neutrinos."
Before a star starts to collapse, it emits neutrinos, so Super-K acts as a kind of early warning system, telling us when to watch for these dazzling cosmic events.
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"Calculations at the back of the envelope indicate that every 30 years or so, a supernova explodes in the detection range of our detectors," said Dr. Uchida. "If you miss one, you will have to wait a few more decades to see the next one."
Neutrino shooting across Japan
The Super-K does not just catch neutrinos that are raining down on space.
Located on the opposite side of Japan to Tokai, the T2K experiment pulls a 295km neutrino beam across the Earth to be captured in Super-K in the west of the country.
Studying how neutrinos change (or "oscillate") as they go through the material can tell us more about the origins of the universe, for example, the relationship between matter and the anti -Material.
Inside Super-Kamiokande
"Our Big Bang models predict that matter and anti-matter should have been created in equal parts," said Dr. Morgan Wascko of Imperial College at Business Insider, "but now [most of] the anti-matter has disappeared one way or the other. "Studying neutrinos could be a way to understand how this happened.
How Super-K catches neutrinos
Buried 1,000 meters underground, Super-Kamiokande is as big as a 15-storey building and looks a bit like this.
Diagram of Super-Kamiokande
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The huge tank is filled with 50,000 tons of ultrapure water. This is because when they travel in water, neutrinos are faster than light. Thus, when a neutrino travels through the water, "it will produce light in the same way that Concord used to produce sound barriers," said Dr. Uchida.
"If a plane goes very fast, faster than the speed of sound, then it will produce sound – a great shockwave – in a way that a slower object does not do it, the same way way that a particle goes into the water, faster than the speed of light in the water, can also produce a shock wave of light. "
The room is lined with 11,000 golden bulbs. These are incredibly sensitive light sensors called photo multiplier tubes, which can capture these shock waves. Here is a close-up:
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Dr. Wascko describes them as "the reverse of a light bulb". In other words, they can detect even tiny amounts of light and convert them into an electric current, which can then be observed.
Terribly pure water
In order for the light of these shock waves to reach the sensors, the water must be cleaner than you can imagine. Super-K filters and purifies it constantly, and even blows it up with UV light to kill any bacteria.
Which makes it really scary.
"Ultra pure water is waiting to dissolve things," said Dr. Uchida. "Pure water is a very, very nasty substance, it has the characteristics of an acid and an alkaline."
"If you were going to soak in this ultra-pure Super-K water, you would get a little exfoliation," said Dr. Wascko. "Whether you want it or not."
People on a boat in Super Kamiokande
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When the Super-K needs maintenance, researchers must go out on inflatable boats (see above) to repair and replace the sensors.
Dr. Matthew Malek, of Sheffield University, and two others were in maintenance since a dinghy when he was a PhD student.
At the end of the working day, the gondola that normally drives physicists inside and outside the tank was broken, so he and two others had to sit for a while. They fought back in their boats, firing the breeze.
"What I did not realize, while we were lying in these boats and we were talking, was that a little of my hair, probably no more than three centimeters, was soaked in the water, "Malek told Business Insider.
As they emptied Super-K's water at that time, Malek did not care to contaminate it. But when he woke up at 3 am the next morning, he had a terrible realization.
"I got up at 3am with the most itchy scalp I've ever had in my life," he said. "It's more irritating than having chickenpox when I was a kid, it was so irritating that I could not sleep."
People on a boat in Super Kamiokande
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He realized that the water had drained nutrients from his hair through the tips, and that this nutrient deficiency had reached his skull. He quickly jumped into the shower and spent half an hour vigorously conditioning his hair.
Another tale comes from Dr. Wascko, who heard that in 2000, when the tank was completely emptied, the researchers found the outline of a key at the bottom of it. "Apparently, someone had left a key there when they filled it in 1995," he said. "When they drained it in 2000, the key had dissolved."
Super-K 2.0
Super-Kamiokande may be massive, but Dr. Wascko told Business Insider that an even larger neutrino detector called "Hyper-Kamiokande" has been proposed.
"We are trying to get approval for this Hyper-Kamiokande experience, and it would start around 2026," he said.
Hyper-K would be 20 times larger than Super-K in terms of volume and with approximately 99,000 light detectors against 11,000.
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