Thursday, May 17, 2012

SNOLAB Inaugurated

In case you missed it, here's the press release on the inauguration of SNOLAB:

The lab is situated 2km beneath the surface of the Earth and will enable researchers ton answer fundamental questions about the history and the composition of the Universe. They will also be able to use the infrastructure to conduct research into the nature of supernovas, our own star – the Sun – and Earth itself. SNOLAB will indeed be at the heart of a wide range of experiments, including PICASSO, an international project that is being lead by UdeM researchers. “In terms of current and future experiments, around half about the detection of dark matter in the Universe and ‘weakly interacting massive particles’ or ‘WIMPs’ in particular. PICASSO is one such research project. WIMPs are in fact particules that we do not know anything about and that would be a part of what we call ‘new physics’,” explained PICASSO Project Leader Professor Viktor Zacek, of the University of Montreal’s Department of Physics. “In fact, the presence of dark energy and dark matter are proof that we are still very far from having completely understood physics and the world that surrounds us.”
A lot of physics are now done underground, literally! :)

Zz.

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