The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO), a 1000 ton heavy water Cherenkov detector under construction in INCO's Creighton mine near Sudbury, Ontario (Canada)

Neutrino detectors

Neutrino interactions with matter are extremely rare, so detecting a neutrino is very hard.

Neutrino detectors are typically large, underground tanks filled with a fluid that reacts to the passage of neutrinos. In neutrino detection, bigger is better! The bigger the tank (detector), the more neutrinos it will detect.

One example of a neutrino detector is the Super-Kamionkande under construction in Japan.

Some neutrino detectors use water as the liquid inside the tank. But here's a piece of trivia for you: early neutrino detectors were filled with perchloroethane which is just a type of cleaning fluid!


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