Identity area
Type of entity
Corporate body
Authorized form of name
Sudbury Neutrino Observatory
Parallel form(s) of name
- SNO
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Description area
Dates of existence
[1984-2006]
History
The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) results have provided revolutionary insight into the properties of neutrinos and the core of the sun. The detector was built 6800 feet under ground, in INCO's Creighton mine near Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. SNO was a heavy-water Cherenkov detector designed to detect neutrinos produced by fusion reactions in the sun. It used 1000 tonnes of heavy water loaned from Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), and contained by a 12 meter diameter acrylic vessel. Neutrinos reacted with the heavy water (D2O) to produce flashes of light called Cherenkov radiation. This light was then detected by an array of 9600 photomultiplier tubes mounted on a geodesic support structure surrounding the heavy water vessel. The detector was immersed in light (normal) water within a 30 meter barrel-shaped cavity (the size of a 10 story building!) excavated from Norite rock. Located in the deepest part of the mine, the overburden of rock shielded the detector from cosmic rays. The detector laboratory, still functioning as part of the new SNOLAB facility, is extremely clean to reduce background signals from radioactive elements present in the mine dust which would otherwise hide the very weak signal from neutrinos.
The first co-spokesmen for the SNO collaboration when it was established in 1984 were Professor Herb Chen from U California, Irvine and Professor George Ewan, Queen’s University.
The director of the experiment, Art McDonald, was co-awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2015 for the experiment's contribution to the discovery of neutrino oscillation.
The underground laboratory has been enlarged into a permanent facility and now operates multiple experiments as SNOLAB. The SNO equipment itself is currently being refurbished for use in the SNO+ experiment.
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Status
Draft
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Written by Deirdre Bryden, 9 April 2019
Language(s)
- English
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Sources
Administrative history based on Sudbury Neutrino Observatory website www.sno.phy.queensu.ca (accessed April 2019), and Wikipedia entry on SNO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Neutrino_Observatory (accessed April 2019)