Richland lab’s detector could be science breakthrough of the year, with your help

A device developed at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is in the running to be named 2017’s scientific breakthrough of the year in a contest by Science magazine.

The public may vote until Sunday at bit.ly/VoteBreakthrough on whether PNNL’s pint-sized neutrino detector or one of three other projects will be named the People’s Choice for Breakthrough of the Year.

The detector, about the size of a camping lantern, is helping scientists better understand the universe.

It rounds out the understanding of particle and nuclear physics, explained Todd Hossbach, a PNNL physicist who worked on the project.

More than 40 years ago the process of elusive, electrically neutral particles called neutrinos bouncing off the nucleus of an atom was just a theory.

It was not until this year that evidence of the particle physics phenomenon was found thanks to the neutrino detector that was designed, engineered and fabricated at PNNL in Richland based on a University of Chicago physicist’s idea.

Neutrinos, one of the smallest particles, bump into the entire nucleus of an atom and impart a tiny amount of energy to the nucleus during neutron star formation and supernovae explosions. The energy’s signal is as tough to spot as a bowling ball’s recoil after a ping-pong ball hits it, according to PNNL.

For more than three decades PNNL researchers have been pioneering ultra-low background methods for measuring extremely low levels of radioactivity and developing the techniques for materials that are ultrapure and have the properties needed for a small neutrino detector.

The detector requires copper that is free of the background radiation coming from cosmic rays pouring in from the universe. PNNL researchers were able to electroform ultrapure copper for the detector in a laboratory built underground at PNNL to shield against radiation. The copper has the lowest known radioactive content, according to PNNL.

The neutrino detector developed by PNNL weighs about 32 pounds, while other neutrino detectors weigh tons.

Because of the small size of the neutrino detector, it could be placed near the Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee to find evidence of the neutrino interaction process before the neutrinos scattered and far fewer of them could be detected. The Spallation Neutron Source generates neutrinos as a byproduct of its research operations.

“We’ve been able to experimentally observe a process predicted so long ago,” Hossbach said.

PNNL researchers who developed the neutrino detector in addition to Hossbach include physicist John Orrell and engineer Cory Overman.

This story was originally published December 8, 2017 at 11:58 AM with the headline "Richland lab’s detector could be science breakthrough of the year, with your help."