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| The KM3net telescope planned for the sea bed under the Mediterranean
will be a network of detectors with a volume of several cubic kilometres, built to detect neutrinos - tiny, fast-moving particles that pass straight through water and even solid rock |
- Detector uses 'towers' taller than Burj Khalifa in Dubai
- 'Watches' for light flashes in 2.2 billion kg of water
- Detects tiny, fast-moving particles which usually pass straight through matter
Telescopes come in all shapes and
sizes - from orbiting space telescopes just a few metres long to the
ambitious 'square kilometer array' planned for South Africa or
Australia, where a network of linked dishes will stare at the sky
together.
But
detecting neutrinos - tiny, fast-moving particles that pass easily
through matter - is more difficult. Neutrino detectors are often located
deep underground, to cut out interference.
A
new telescope planned for the sea bed under the Mediterranean will be a
network of detectors with a volume of several cubic kilometers - each
detector is taller than the 830m Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai.  |
| The KM3net's detectors compared to some of the tallest towers on earth - each one will be higher than Dubai's Burj Khalifa tower |
'Any time you detect a particle, what
you're always doing is having the particle interact with some kind of
matter, whether it's water, steel, air or ice,' says Peter Fisher, a
particle physicist at MIT.
'The less the particle interacts, the more material you need for it to interact in.'
The
sea water in between the 900m KM3Net detectors works as a giant optical
'detector' - the detectors look for 'flashes' caused by neutrinos
hitting water atoms.
Most of the neutrinos pass straight through, but the few that do collide with atoms will be picked up by the huge telescope.
The detector's discoveries could propel research in dark matter and high energy physics.
Construction could start as early as next year.
Over the past decade the three pilot
projects have explored the idea, building and deploying smaller scale
prototype telescopes designed to operate at depths ranging from 2500 to
4500 m.
Antares - on
the floor of the Mediterranean near Toulon, France - is now the largest
neutrino telescope in the Northern hemispere, made of twelve 350-metre
detectors on the sea bed.
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| The Antares detector - a prototype for KM3Net - consists of 12 750m detectors on the sea bed near Toulon, France. It's the current largest on earth |
'The Mediterranean Sea is ideal for
these huge structures - thanks to water of excellent optical properties
at the right depth and excellent shore-baseddata processing,' says the
KM3Net organisation.
'The
KM3NeT neutrino telescope will be unique in the world in its physics
sensitivity and will provide access to scientific data that will propel
research in different fields, including astronomy, dark matter searches,
cosmic ray and high energy physics.'
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