NOvA Sees First Long-distance Neutrinos

The NOvA experiment, centered at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) near Chicago has detected its first neutrinos.

Ryan Patterson, assistant professor of physics at Caltech and principal investigator for the Caltech NOvA team of eight researchers, states, "With these first neutrinos in hand, we celebrate the official start of our physics run. The data we collect with NOvA will provide a brand-new window on how neutrino masses arise and relate to one another, and whether there are new physical laws lurking in the neutrino sector of the standard model of particle physics."

Neutrinos are curious particles that travel near the speed of light, rarely interacting with matter. The NOvA experiment, a collaboration of 208 scientists from 38 institutions, is scheduled to run for six years. It includes the Fermilab accelerator and two receivers, one located near Fermilab, the other some 500 miles away in Ash River, Minnesota, near the Canadian border.