Super-Kamiokande: neutrino detector

In Japan, near the village of Higashi-Mozumi, 1.8 km into a horizontal mine-shaft underneath Mt.Ikenoyama, there is the coolest looking detector I have ever seen. It looks like something straight out of science-fiction.

The purpose of the Super-Kamiokande is to detect neutrinos . These particles are of great interest to physicists, but they are so far undetectable. Well, there are high-energy neutrinos that are 'artificially' created during nuclear reactions, and these are detectable, but the ones that are of interest are those formed 1 second after the big bang - these ancient particles do not interact normally with matter, and are even thought to comprise 0.3% of dark matter.

Anyway, for more on that try this article. I mostly just wanted to post pictures of the detector, which is a body of water surrounded by photomultiplier tubes (see after the cut):