Researchers from the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology
were on hand for the groundbreaking ceremony that marks the start of
construction on the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF). The facility
will be home to the international collaboration known as the Deep
Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) which is being built and operated
by a group of roughly 1,000 scientists and engineers from 30 countries.
When complete, LBNF/DUNE will be the largest experiment ever built
in the United States to study the properties of mysterious particles
called neutrinos. Unlocking the mysteries of these particles could help
explain more about how the universe works, and why matter exists at all.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator
Laboratory, located outside Chicago, will generate a beam of neutrinos
and send them 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) through the earth to the
Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF), where a four-story-high,
70,000-ton detector will be built beneath the surface to catch those
neutrinos. DUNE will have one detector at Fermilab and one at SURF. The
facility at SURF (Far Detector) will include one detector consisting
(when complete) of four 10 kiloton massive modules.
Scientists will study the interactions of neutrinos in the
detectors, looking to better understand the changes these particles
undergo as they travel across the country in less than the blink of an
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