05-01-2003, 06:53 PM
You don't wanna hear what I think... believe me, it'll hurt your brain.
Oh, and Soul, those things you're referring to are neutrinos. It's just one kind of many particles you can't see or detect without special equipment. They're building a giant sensor to see if they can get some data from these neutrinos, origins, blah blah, the usual. It's a huge sphere that is filled with "heavy water." Heavy water is water with an extra hydrogen atom stuck on one of the H2's of the H2O. Or something like that. There is a good chance a neutrino will enter the sphere and hit this atom, causing a little burst of energy. The energy is detected by sensors inside of the sphere, and data from the burst is sent to computers. It is deep underground because if they put it above ground, all of the heavy water would just be bursting and they couldn't keep track of what particle was doing what. Underground, basically only neutrinos can get to it. I'm not completely clear on it, it's all complex stuff.
Oh, and Soul, those things you're referring to are neutrinos. It's just one kind of many particles you can't see or detect without special equipment. They're building a giant sensor to see if they can get some data from these neutrinos, origins, blah blah, the usual. It's a huge sphere that is filled with "heavy water." Heavy water is water with an extra hydrogen atom stuck on one of the H2's of the H2O. Or something like that. There is a good chance a neutrino will enter the sphere and hit this atom, causing a little burst of energy. The energy is detected by sensors inside of the sphere, and data from the burst is sent to computers. It is deep underground because if they put it above ground, all of the heavy water would just be bursting and they couldn't keep track of what particle was doing what. Underground, basically only neutrinos can get to it. I'm not completely clear on it, it's all complex stuff.