Sudbury Neutrino Observatory
The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) is located 2000 metres underground in an active nickel mine in Greater Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. The detector is designed to detect cosmic neutrinos from the Cherenkov effect resulting from extremely rare interactions on the deuterium atoms in 1000 tonnes of heavy water in a spherical acrylic tank, surrounded by around 9600 light sensors. This inner tank and the sensors sit inside a large tank of ordinary water.
This detector is large enough to determine the arrival direction of neutrinos, and has the objectives of understanding the solar neutrino problem, neutrino oscillations and neutrino mass.
The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory is a major setting in the Neanderthal Parallax trilogy by Canadian science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer.
Asteroid (14724) SNO is named in honor of the laboratory.
Related topics
Other neutrino observatories
