First plate in backbone of steel for MINOS

1 August 2001

first plate in backbone of steel for MINOS_sm

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The first of 486 planes of steel stands at one end of the framework that will eventually supprt the complete MINOS detector, 700 m underground in the Soudan Underground Laboratory in Minnesota. MINOS (Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search) will investigate in detail "neutrino oscillations" - in which particles called neutrinos change type - in a beam of neutrinos created 730 km away at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois. The final detector will be a 5400-tonne sandwich of steel (where the neutrinos will interact) and scintillator (to reveal the interactions). Each plate of steel in the detector is only 2.5 cm thick, but 8 m wide and 8 m tall. With a weight of 11.25 tonnes each, the sheets must be carefully supported to prevent them from crinkling like paper!

Credit: MINOS

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