December 2006 / January 2007
SNO wins inaugural NSERC Polanyi award
A team of international scientists who have spent years plumbing the depths of one of the mysteries of the universe has won Canada's newest science research award.
From left to right, Prof. Art McDonald, Director of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO), Dr. Suzanne Fortier, President of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), and Dr. John C. Polanyi, the Nobel laureate for whom the prize is named. (Photo provided by NSERC).
Scientists of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) won the inaugural Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) John C. Polanyi Award, including a $250,000 research grant prize.
"Our team is very proud to have been named the first recipients of the Polanyi Prize - NSERC has been a major source of funding of SNO research and this recognition of our discoveries is a wonderful result of a great international team effort and gratefully received," said SNO Director and Queen's University Research Chair, Prof. Art McDonald.
"NSERC is very pleased with the research accomplishments of the scientists who have so ably taken advantage of this tremendous research tool," said Suzanne Fortier, NSERC President, who recently announced the award winner. "Given the wonderful example they offer as discoverers par excellence to Canadians everywhere, this award, named for a Canadian Nobel prize winner, is well deserved."
SNO operates a $100 million detector housed in the world's deepest underground laboratory at Inco Ltd.'s Creighton nickel mine near Sudbury. The heart of this detector is a 10-storey cavern excavated by Inco miners. The world's largest acrylic vessel is located there, holding 1,000 tonnes of heavy water on loan from Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL). The detector is used to observe neutrinos, tiny subatomic particles produced inside the sun that make up all matter in the universe and that had gone mostly undetected until now.
Artist's rendering of the SNO lab.
Neutrinos are extremely difficult to detect because they can pass through most forms of matter easily. The heavy water in the SNO detector allows the detection of these elusive particles when they crash directly into an electron or a nucleus of an atom in a heavy water molecule. The collisions emit small pulses of light, which are captured by 9,600 photomultiplier tubes that surround the heavy water vessel. False signals from cosmic rays and other radiation at the Earth's surface are kept to a minimum by the two kilometres of rock above at this unique underground facility.
The SNO team, consisting of 200 scientists from 15 countries, has been recognized worldwide for its discoveries by proving that neutrinos released in the core of the sun change their 'flavour' or type as they travel to Earth. About two-thirds of them change into two other types of neutrinos, not visible to earlier detectors used at other laboratories. The SNO measurements also proved that the most basic laws of physics are incomplete. SNO research data has thereby led to a more complete description of nature at the subatomic level.
This first phase complete, excavation crews are currently digging out a new clean lab the size of a four-storey house to supplement the original ten-storey facility. Teams from Britain and the U.S. are eager to collaborate with Canadians to use the enhanced facility to further fathom the mysteries of 'dark matter' and rare forms of radioactivity.
The SNO team honoured by the NSERC Award includes scientists from Queen's University, Carleton University, Laurentian University, the University of Guelph, the University of British Columbia, AECL, TRIUMF, and the National Research Council. As well, SNO has a number of international partners, including the University of Pennsylvania, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of Washington, Brookhaven National Laboratory, the University of Texas at Austin, and Louisiana State University in the United States.
The Observatory was also the winner of the 2006 ORION Discovery Award. Through ORION advanced networking links, scientists are able to measure flux, energy and direction of electron-neutrinos produced in the sun, to receive data directly from the experiment to their desktops, to monitor equipment remotely and to perform complex calculations using high-performance computing resources. SNO uses ORION to facilitate high-speed communication for many initiatives including "Supernova Watch" - initiatives which would otherwise be impossible without the high-speed connectivity provided by ORION.
"The success of SNO has arisen from an extensive partnership including ORION that enabled us to interact among our international colleagues, transmit data rapidly and control parts of the experiment remotely. We look forward to even more extensive use of the network for future experiments at the new SNOLAB," said Prof. Art McDonald.
For more information about SNO, please visit www.sno.phy.queensu.ca.
Back to Headlines
|
|
