While doing some light reading about neutrinos, I found these amazing pictures of the Super-Kamiokande. It's a giant chamber of water buried deep in a mine in Japan, which is surrounded by photomultiplier tubes. These tubes pick up the rare interaction of neutrinos with the electrons in the water, causing Cherenkov radiation, which can then be used to determine the typ
e of neutrino and the direction it came from. Personally, I would like to go swimming in there! The water is highly purified, so the probably wouldn't take to kindly to it. However, I do find it very interesting that detection of distant supernovae happens not through a telescope, but over half a mile unde
rground. While this is all good and fun, my question is, have they found that the neutrinos are heating up the core of the earth? Have they just not told us? Things are looking a bit too much like that 2012 movie...For more pictures, here is the homepage for the Super-Kamiokande. They take a while to load, but they are super hi-res. Just what I like to see.
