MINOS

MINOS stands for Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search and refers to a neutrino detector for muon neutrinos of the Soudan Underground Laboratory.

The MINOS detector in the former Soudan iron mine (Minnesota / USA) to measure the mixing angle to explain an asymmetry between the current occurrence of matter and antimatter. These neutrinos are produced at Fermilab in Illinois, focused on MINOS and sent through the ground to 735 km distant detector. There is tallied how many neutrinos have changed.

The oscillation length of muon neutrinos corresponds to about 735 km (hence the distance to the Fermilab ). One hopes that this more accurate insights into the composition of these elementary particles.

The MINOS detector itself is essentially a 31 m long octagonal tube of 486 steel plates. The diameter of the tube is 8 m. The whole acts as a tracking calorimeter made ​​of steel. Steel and plastic scintillator detectors, which are sandwiched, measure the interaction energies of the particles and the consequences for the exiting muons torques. The paths of the muons be viewed through the magnetic steel plates.