Grant extended to CSUDH for project exploring laws of nature
The web site reads like science fiction. "Deep inside the Kamioka zinc mine 5 km. S.E. of Mozumi, Japan," says www.csudh.edu/neutrion, "a cylindrical tank 40 m. in diameter and depth, is filled with 50,000 tons of highly purified water. 11,200 20-inch photomultiplier tubes surround the tank and scan for solar, atmospheric, and supernova neutrinos, for neutrino oscillations, for nucleon decay, and more. This is the Super-Kamiokande Neuutrino Experiment and it is paying off. The neutrino has only just recently been shown to have mass."
That conclusion is crucial to the long-term project known as Super-K, said Kenneth Ganezer, professor of physics, and principal investigator for the CSUDH contingent. "We’re going to learn the fundamental laws of nature."
How so? "We want
to understand the issue of mass and matter
and what they are. This is beyond Einstein. Not only is it equivalent
to energy via E=mc2, but where it comes from." In fact, this evidence that
solar and atmospheric neutrinos – tiny, electrically neutral, sub-atomic
particles - have mass will change the way we view nuclear fusion, stellar
evolution, and the smallest components of matter.
The Super-Kamiokande
Collaboration includes scientists from
25 institutions in Japan and the United States. It has been the most sensitive
detector in the world for monitoring neutrinos from various sources. Its research
has included measurements of electron-neutrinos from the sun: They comprise
35 percent of the number estimated by
a consensus of theoretical models of the sun’s neutrino producing processes.
Moreover, studies indicate that the observed energy spectrum of those neutrinos
is different from what was expected.
Ganezer heads the CSUDH component of the international Super-K project that includes primarily four nations – the United States, Japan, Republic of South Korea, and Poland.
To propel the university’s continued involvement, CSUDH this fall received a new three-year, $222,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.
Its importance cannot be overstated, says Ganezer, who has worked 15 years on Super-K and other similar projects. "This experiment may ultimately help us uncover the beginnings of the universe – and perhaps unveil what lies at its end. It may reveal the largest – and smallest – objects in the universe. And, there may never be another experiment like it that can probe such basic phenomena.
"Science is constantly changing," Ganezer explains. "There are no absolutes. To everything we believe to be true, there may be an exception… There are no absolutes."
- T.W
