The Washington Post today explains the cross-state particle physics experiment NOvA, which has been kicked into high-gear this summer with the help of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding.
Scientists are playing an exotic game of pitch and catch between Illinois and Minnesota. Their catcher's mitt is solid iron, weighs 5,500 tons, and is parked in northern Minnesota in an abandoned iron mine. With millions of dollars from the federal stimulus package, construction crews are now building a second mitt near the Canadian border. It's even heavier, some 15,000 tons, and is made of 385,000 liquid-filled cells of PVC plastic.
Five hundred miles to the south is the pitcher: Fermilab, a sprawling U.S. government laboratory west of Chicago where physicists do violent things with tiny particles.
The article goes on to give excellent explanations of the mysteries and behavior of neutrinos as well as why scientists consider the tiny particles key to understanding the universe.
The story by reporter Joel Achenbach also hints at how the basic research project could create a starting point for industrial applications that keep stimulating the economy long into the future.
This kind of basic research in particle physics has no obvious application to day-to-day life in the short run, but scientists say it's likely to change society down the road.
"The technological impact of basic science has enormously changed the way we all live," Marshak said. "It's like when Albert Einstein came out with general relativity in 1915: he had no idea that Minnesota would use it, via GPS satellites, in order to plow straight rows of corn -- in the dark."
Read the full article here.
