Excavating for MINOS

8 December 1999



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Experiments in particle physics often involve logistical problems quite unlike anything else in research in physics. This image shows excavations underway for the part of the MINOS (Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search) experiment*, which will detect neutrinos produced at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois after they have travelled 730 km beneath the Earth's surface to the Soudan Underground Laboratory in Minnesota. The detector at Soudan will be a 5400-tonne sandwich of steel and scintillator 8 m wide and 8 m tall and 30 m long. To accommodate this, a new cavern is being excavated at the Soudan Laboratory, which is at the site of an historic mine, with the only access via a mine shaft 1 m by 2 m. This means not only that building the detector is like building a ship in a bottle, but that the space inside the bottle has first to be created via the neck of the bottle. All the rock excavated must be removed via the narrow shaft, and large equipment must be taken down in pieces and then reassembled.

While the cavern is being excavated you can see weekly photos of progress here.

(*Support for UK involvement in this experiment was announced by the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) on 8 December 1999.)

Credit: Jerry Meier / MINOS