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"This is truly an historic occasion for the state of Minnesota,
for the future of our university and I think we all know
that this trench we're gonna dig is going to establish a foundation for the future
for high-energy physics and science, not just here, but around the world."
University of Minnesota President Robert Bruininks is talking
about the NOvA neutrino detector that, thanks to $40 million from the Department of Energy,
is being built near the Ash River in northern Minnesota.
The NOvA laboratory will house a 15,000-ton particle detector that will investigate the role
of subatomic particles called neutrinos in the origin of the universe.
"We make a neutrino beam at Fermi Lab and we shoot it through the Earth, no tunnel,
just right straight through the Earth, because neutrinos don't
like to interact with matter anyway.
And it comes up here at our detector here, in Ash River,
at this building that we're about to break the ground on."
The beam starts at the Fermi Lab outside of Chicago.
It's last stop used to be the underground Minos detector in Soudan, Minnesota.
It continues on a line to the northwest, where it will now meet the NOvA site.
"And so the neutrino beam, which is made at the accelerator at Fermi Lab,
is actually aimed at the Soudan detector, which is half a mile underground.
That's why it was easy to select this site, we just followed the beam line
and went twelve kilometers off it and picked a nice, high hill to build our building on
and that's how we selected the NOvA site."
"The kind of neutrinos we make at Fermi Lab are one kind called muon neutrinos and we're looking
to see if they turn into another kind up here called electron neutrinos.
If we were really lucky and saw lots of events, then we get to think a little bit
about what's called CP violation.
Charged perry violation, which has to do with why the universe is composed only
of matter and not of anti-matter.
Normally, you'd think there would be equal parts of each, but there aren't and nobody knows why.
But if there's a particular phase that goes on here called CP Violation,
then maybe we'll get a handle on that, as well "The first question that everybody asks is,
'what good does this do us directly?'
and there really is no direct answer.
It may be the missing piece of some puzzle that's going
to answer an important question that's 10 or 15 or 20 years down the line,
this may be some important piece.
Since we don't know the answer now, we don't really know what it is.
It doesn't mean you shouldn't look.
It's just the questioning nature of people to try and understand everything and how it works."
The money for the project is coming to the U of M as part
of the Federal Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
"I would argue that the work that goes on here and the work that goes
on throughout the University of Minnesota system is vitally important
to the economy of our state and nation."
"It'll create probably around 30 full-time jobs for the couple of years it takes
to build the detector and then six-10 full-time jobs for another 10-15 years.
So there will be some good jobs for some people and we're just looking for good workers."