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A golden chamber buried under a

mountain in Japan contains water so pure


it can dissolve metal, and it's helping
scientists detect dying stars
insider@insider.com (Isobel Asher Hamilton)

Business Insider3 days ago

Super Kamiokande

The neutrino detector Super-Kamiokande.

Kamioka Observatory, ICRR (Institute for Cosmic Ray Research),


The University of Tokyo

 The Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector is a physics


experiment the size of a 15-story building, buried under a
mountain in Japan.
 Neutrinos are sub-atomic particles that pass through us all
the time, and studying them can tell us about supernovas and the
composition of the universe.
 Super-Kamiokande featured on the cover of Nature Magazine
in April 2020 after the detector played a vital part in a paper
examining the relationship between matter and anti-matter.
 The detector is full of ultra-pure water, which can leach the
nutrients out of your hair and dissolve metal.
 Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Hidden 1,000 metres under Mount Ikeno in Japan is a place that


looks like a supervillain's dream.

Super-Kamiokande (or "Super-K" as it's sometimes referred to) is


a neutrino detector. Neutrinos are sub-atomic particles which
travel through space and pass through solid matter as though it
were air.

Studying these particles is helping scientists detect dying stars


and learn more about the universe. Business Insider spoke to
three scientists about how the giant gold chamber works — and
the dangers of conducting experiments inside it.

Related Video: What if Humans Tried Landing on the Sun


 

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Seeing the sub-atomic world

Neutrinos can be very hard to detect, so much so that Neil


deGrasse Tyson dubbed them "the most elusive prey in the
cosmos." In this video, he explains  that the detection chamber
is buried deep within the earth to stop other particles from
getting in.

"Matter poses no obstacle to a neutrino," he says. "A neutrino


could pass through a hundred light-years of steel without even
slowing down."

But why catch them at all?


"If there's a supernova, a star that collapses into itself and turns
into a black hole," Dr Yoshi Uchida of Imperial College London
told Business Insider. "If that happens in our galaxy, something
like Super-K is one of the very few objects that can see the
neutrinos from it."

Before a star starts to collapse it shoots out neutrinos, so Super-


K acts as a sort of early-warning system, telling us when to look
out for these dazzling cosmic events.

The Crab Nebula (pictured) is the result of a supernova explosion observed in 1054.

NASA, ESA, G. Dubner (IAFE, CONICET-University of Buenos


Aires) et al.; A. Loll et al.; T. Temim et al.; F. Seward et al.;
VLA/NRAO/AUI/NSF; Chandra/CXC; Spitzer/JPL-Caltech; XMM-
Newton/ESA; and Hubble/STScI
"The back-of-the-envelope calculations say it's going to be about
once every 30 years that a supernova explodes in the sort of
range that our detectors can see," said Dr Uchida. "If you miss
one you're going to have to wait another few decades on average
to see the next one."

Firing neutrinos through Japan

Super-K doesn't just catch neutrinos raining down from space.

Situated on the opposite side of Japan in Tokai, the T2K


experiment  fires a neutrino beam 295 km through the Earth to be
picked up in Super-K on the west side of the country.

Studying the way the neutrinos change (or "oscillate") as they


pass through matter may tell us more about the origins of the
universe.

In April 2020 Super-Kamiokande featured on the cover


of Nature magazine following a breakthrough using the detector
which brought researchers closer to understanding the
relationship between matter and anti-matter.
Looking up at the top of Super-Kamiokande.

Kamioka Observatory, ICRR (Institute for Cosmic Ray Research),


The University of Tokyo

"Our big bang models predict that matter and anti-matter should
have been created in equal parts," Dr Morgan Wascko of Imperial
College told Business Insider, "but now [most of] the anti-matter
has disappeared through one way or another."

Researchers fired neutrinos and anti-neutrinos at Super-


Kamiokande to study how they oscillated. According to Imperial,
the researchers' findings provide the "strongest evidence yet"
that matter and antimatter behave differently, explaining why the
two wouldn't immediately annihilate each other at the beginning
of the universe.

"This result brings us closer than ever before to answering the


fundamental question of why the matter in our universe exists. If
confirmed – at the moment we're over 95 percent sure – it will
have profound implications for physics and should point the way
to a better understanding of how our universe evolved," said Dr
Patrick Dunne , a physicist at Imperial college.

How Super-K catches neutrinos


A diagram of Super-Kamiokande.

Kamioka Observatory, ICRR (Institute for Cosmic Ray Research),


The University of Tokyo

Buried 1,000 metres underground, Super-Kamiokande is as big as


a 15-story building.

The enormous tank is filled with 50,000 tonnes of ultra-pure


water. This is because when travelling through water, neutrinos
are faster than light. So when a neutrino travels through water,
"it will produce light in the same way that Concord used to
produce sonic booms," said Dr Uchida.

"If an aeroplane is going very fast, faster than the speed of


sound, then it'll produce sound — a big shockwave — in a way a
slower object doesn't. In the same way a particle passing through
water, if it's going faster than the speed of light in water, can
also produce a shockwave of light."

The chamber is lined with 11,000 golden-coloured bulbs. These


are incredibly sensitive light-detectors called Photo Multiplier
Tubes (PMTs) which can pick up these shockwaves. 

Here's a closeup of a PMT:

Dr Wascko describes them as "the inverse of a lightbulb." Simply


put, they can detect even minuscule amounts of light and convert
it into an electrical current, which can then be observed.

Terrifyingly pure water

In order for the light from these shockwaves to reach the


sensors, the water has to be cleaner than you can possibly
imagine. Super-K is constantly filtering and re-purifying it, and
even blasts it with UV light to kill off any bacteria.

Which actually makes it pretty creepy.

"Water that's ultra-pure is waiting to dissolve stuff into it," said


Dr Uchida. "Pure water is very, very nasty stuff. It has the
features of an acid and an alkaline."

"If you went for a soak in this ultra-pure Super-K water you would
get quite a bit of exfoliation," said Dr Wascko. "Whether you want
it or not."

When Super-K needs maintenance, researchers need to go out on


rubber dinghies to fix and replace the sensors.
A dinghy is lowered into the detector.

Kamioka Observatory, ICRR (Institute for Cosmic Ray


Research),The University of Tokyo
From the dinghies, scientists can inspect the PMTs.

Kamioka Observatory, ICRR (Institute for Cosmic Ray


Research),The University of Tokyo
Gradually the water-level is lowered so the researchers can get to each domed PMT
in turn.

Kamioka Observatory, ICRR (Institute for Cosmic Ray


Research),The University of Tokyo
Here researchers replace a PMT.

Kamioka Observatory, ICRR (Institute for Cosmic Ray


Research),The University of Tokyo
A cross-section photograph of the tank after it's been totally drained for
refurbishment gives some sense of scope.

Kamioka Observatory, ICRR (Institute for Cosmic Ray


Research),The University of Tokyo

Dr Matthew Malek, of the University of Sheffield, and two others


were doing maintenance from a dinghy back when he was a PhD
student.

At the end of the day's work, the gondola that normally takes the
physicists in and out of the tank was broken, so he and two
others had to sit tight for a while. They kicked back in their
boats, shooting the breeze.

"What I didn't realise, as we were laying back in these boats and


talking is that a little bit of my hair, probably no more than three
centimeters, was dipped in the water," Malek told Business
Insider.
As they were draining the water out of Super-K at the time, Malek
didn't worry about contaminating it. But when he awoke at 3 a.m.
the next morning, he had an awful realisation.

"I got up at 3 o'clock in the morning with the itchiest scalp I have
ever had in my entire life," he said. "Itchier than having
chickenpox as a child. It was so itchy I just couldn't sleep."

The water in Super-K has some disconcerting qualities.

Kamioka Observatory, ICRR (Institute for Cosmic Ray


Research),The University of Tokyo

He realised that the water had leeched his hair's nutrients out
through the tips, and that this nutrient deficiency had worked its
way up to his scalp. He quickly jumped in the shower and spent
half an hour vigorously conditioning his hair.

Another tale comes from Dr Wascko, who heard that in 2000


when the tank had been fully drained, researchers found the
outline of a wrench at the bottom of it. "Apparently somebody
had left a wrench there when they filled it in 1995," he said.
"When they drained it in 2000 the wrench had dissolved."

Super-K 2.0

Super-Kamiokande may be massive, but Dr Wascko told Business


Insider that a yet bigger neutrino detector called "Hyper-
Kamiokande" has been proposed.

"We're trying to get this Hyper-Kamiokande experiment approved,


and that would start running in approximately 2026," he said.

Hyper-K would be 20 times bigger than Super-K in terms of sheer


volume, and with about 99,000 light detectors as opposed to
11,000.

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