Inside the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory

21 January 1998

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Last week's Picture of the Week showed light-sensitive phototubes that are being used to catch the tell-tale signs of neutrinos in the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) in Canada. SNO has been designed to catch neutrinos from the Sun, in particular to provide new information to help to solve the long-standing "solar neutrino problem", which arises because existing experiments detect fewer neutrinos from the Sun than theory predicts. SNO differs from other solar neutrino experiments by using heavy water, in which the neutrinos can interact in different ways. This gives the observatory the unique ability to detect all three types of neutrino (electron-neutrinos, muon-neutrinos and tau-neutrinos). SNO will contain 1000 tonnes of heavy water, held in a 12-m diameter spherical acrylic vessel. This image shows one half of the vessel during its construction.

Credit: Sudbury Neutrino Observatory

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