Scintillator for the MINOS experiement

13 October 1999

Display high resolution version

A huge plane of scintillator - a plastic that pinpoints the passage of subatomic particles - rises slowly to the vertical, in the assembly of a prototype for a detector that will trap the elusive particles known as neutrinos.The MINOS experiment aims to 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 in the Soudan Laboratory will be a 5400-tonne sandwich of steel (to make the neutrinos interact) and scintillator (to reveal products of the interactions).

The scintillator - wrapped in shiny aluminium foil - is in strips 2.5 cm thick and 4 cm wide. In all 192 strips make up a plane 8 x 8 x 0.025 m. In this image the plane is supported on a "strongback" while being lifted into place. This layer forms part of a four-layer prototype, which will be used to test various aspects of the final detector.

Credit: Jeff Nelson, University of Minnesota