Posted on by Fraser Cain

How Quickly Do Black Holes Form?

How Quickly Do Black Holes Form?


A star can burn its hydrogen for millions or even billions of years. But when the party’s over, black holes form in an instant. How long does it all take to happen.

Uh-oh! You’re right next to a black hole that’s starting to form.

In the J.J. Abrams Star Trek Universe, this ended up being a huge inconvenience for Spock as he tried to evade a ticked off lumpy forehead Romulan who’d made plenty of questionable life choices, drunk on Romulan ale and living above a tattoo parlor.

So, if you were piloting Spock’s ship towards the singularity, do you have any hope of escaping before it gets to full power? Think quickly now. This not only has implications for science, but most importantly, for the entire Star Trek reboot! Or you know, we can just create a brand new timeline. Everybody’s doing it. Retcon, ftw.

Most black holes come to be after a huge star explodes into a supernova. Usually, the force of gravity in a huge star is balanced by its radiation – the engine inside that sends out energy into space. But when the star runs out of fuel to burn, gravity quickly takes over and the star collapses. But how quickly? Ready your warp engines and hope for the best.

Here’s the bad news – there’s not much hope for Spock or his ship. A star’s collapse happens in an instant, and the star’s volume gets smaller and smaller. Your escape velocity – the energy you need to escape the star – will quickly exceed the speed of light.

You could argue there’s a moment in time where you could escape. This isn’t quite the spot to argue about Vulcan physiology, but I assume their reaction time is close to humans. It would happen faster than you could react, and you’d be boned.

But look at the bright side – maybe you’d get to discover a whole new universe. Unless of course Black holes just kill you, and aren’t sweet magical portals for you and your space dragon which you can name Spock, in honor of your Vulcan friend who couldn’t outrun a black hole.

Artist’s impression of the supergiant star Betelgeuse as it was revealed with ESO’s Very Large Telescope. Credit: ESO/L.Calçada
Artist’s impression of the supergiant star Betelgeuse as it was revealed with ESO’s Very Large Telescope. Credit: ESO/L.Calçada

Here we’ve been talking about what happens if a black hole suddenly appears beside you. The good news is, supernovae can be predicted. Not very precisely, but astronomers can say which stars are nearing the end of their lives.

Here’s an example. In the constellation Orion, Betelgeuse the bright star on the right shoulder, is expected to go supernova sometime in the next few hundred thousand years.

That’s plenty of time to get out of the way.

So: black holes are dangerous for your health, but at least there’s lots of time to move out of the way if one looks threatening. Just don’t go exploring too close!

If you were to fall through a black hole, what do you think would happen? Naw, just kidding, we all know you’d die. Why don’t you tell us what your favorite black hole sci fi story is in the comments below!

And if you like what you see, come check out our Patreon page and find out how you can get these videos early while helping us bring you more great content!

Posted on by Brian Koberlein

What Would A Black Hole Look Like?

Artistic view of a radiating black hole. Credit: NASA

If you could see a black hole with your own eyeballs, what would you see?

Here on the Guide to Space production team: We love everything about Black Holes.

We like how they’re terrifying and completely conflict with our day to day experience of how stuff should work. We like how they completely mess you up before absolutely tearing you pieces, and we like how they ruin time and space and everything nearby.

We like them so much, we even enjoy giving them cute nick names like “Kevin”.

So I’m now going to show you images and animations of black holes.
Should you find this either too exciting or terrifying and need a breather I suggest you pause the video and walk around the block and try not to think about how absolutely terrifying these things are.

Those are just the artist’s illustrations, who’ve no doubt been awe inspired in the same way the rest of us have… but those people have never ACTUALLY seen one. Have they?

Is that what a black hole would really look like? Or are these just pictures of lasercorns?
I’ve got good news!

Here’s a picture of a real black hole. Can’t see much? That’s because it’s more than 25,000 light years away. It’s got 4 million times the mass of the Sun, and it’s still a tiny dot.

So, how do we know it’s there? The answer is awful. Even if we can’t see them directly, they make such a giant mess of things in their neighborhood we can still figure out where they are.

For an actively feeding black hole, we see a disk of material surrounding it.

This artist’s impression shows the surroundings of the supermassive black hole at the heart of the active galaxy NGC 3783 in the southern constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur). Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser
This artist’s impression shows the surroundings of the supermassive black hole at the heart of the active galaxy NGC 3783 in the southern constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur). Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

Quasars are the jets emanating from active black holes, and we see them billions of light-years away. As you get closer, this area would get brighter until it was like you were close to millions of stars. The radiation would be overwhelming. Closer and closer, there would be region of total darkness, that’s the black hole itself.

For non-active or “sleepy time” black holes, we’d only see the distortion of light around them as light is bent by gravity. As you got closer and closer, there’d be less light coming from the area around the black hole. No photons can be reflected by it. You’d then pass a region called the photon sphere, where light is orbiting the black hole. You’d see the whole Universe as a swirling jumble of mixed up photons.

Next the event horizon, where light can’t escape. You could look out into the Universe and see the distorted light coming from everywhere, but the singularity itself would still be dark. Is it a single point, or a sphere? Astronomers don’t know yet.

A new telescope is in the works called the Event Horizon Telescope. It would combine the light from a worldwide constellation of radio telescopes. They’re hoping to actually image the event horizon of a black hole, and could have their first images within 5 years. Hopefully it’ll never get loaded onto a ship with Sam Neill.

Here’s hoping we’re just a few years away from knowing what black holes look like directly. But once seen, they can never be unseen. What do you think it’ll look like? tell us in the comments below!

And if you like what you see, come check out our Patreon page and find out how you can get these videos early while helping us bring you more great content!

Posted on by Fraser Cain

What Does Earth Look Like From the Moon?

What Does Earth Look Like From the Moon?

If you could stand on the Moon and look back at the Earth, what would you see? How would it compare from our familiar vantage point?

We know what the Moon looks like from Earth, but what would the Earth look like from the Moon?

Pretty strange, actually.

The Moon is tidally locked to us, and it presents only one face to the Earth.

If you were on the near side of the Moon, the Earth would always be in the sky. And if you were on the far side, you’d never see it.

Also, it’s weird there. So you’d probably want to move.

If you were standing on the Moon, looking up, you’d see the Earth, hanging in the sky forever, or for however long your robot body holds out.

It would go through phases, like the Moon, moving from total darkness, though quarter illumination, Full Earth, and back again. But the features on the Earth would be changing. The face of the Earth would be illuminated, and you’d see the entire planet turning throughout the day and you could use it to cheat on Geography tests.

It wouldn’t be totally dark on the night side because “humans”. You’d see those beautiful blobs of stringy light on the shadowed parts of the Earth.

Our Moon follows an elliptical path around the Earth, getting as close as 363,000 km and as far as 405,000 km.

This means the Earth would get bigger and smaller in the sky. As Earth is much larger than the Moon, it would take up 13 times as much area.

The Earth wouldn’t actually hang motionless in the sky. We see lunar libration from our perspective, which lets us peek around the corner of the Moon. But from the Moon, we’d see the Earth move back and forth in the sky over 27 days.

Earthrise (credit—Apollo 8/NASA)
Earthrise (credit—Apollo 8/NASA)

Remember this famous Earthrise photo captured by Apollo 8? It’s on every single sales brochure for lunar real estate.

Don’t be fooled, if you were on the Moon, you’d never see an Earthrise like that.
In fact, the only way to get a view like that is be on a spacecraft orbiting the Moon.

If I lived on the Moon, I’d want property Earthside.

Would you like to see the Earth from the Moon? What other views of the Solar System would you like to get?

And if you like what you see, come check out our Patreon page and find out how you can get these videos early while helping us bring you more great content!

Posted on by Fraser Cain

What Part of the Milky Way Can We See?

What Part of the Milky Way Can We See?

When you look up and see the Milky Way, you’re gazing into the heart of our home galaxy. What, exactly, are we looking at?

Anyone who’s ever been in truly dark skies has seen the Milky Way. The bright band across the sky is unmistakable. It’s a view of our home galaxy from within.

As you stare out into the skies and see that splash of stars, have you ever wondered, what are you looking at? Which parts are towards the inside of the galaxy and which parts are looking out? Where’s that supermassive black hole you’ve heard so much about?

In order to see the Milky Way at all, you need seriously dark skies, away from the light polluted city. As the skies darken, the Milky Way will appear as a hazy fog across the sky.

Imagine it as this vast disk of stars, with the Sun embedded right in it, about 27,000 light-years from the core. We’re seeing the galaxy edge on, from the inside, and so we see the galactic disk as a band that forms a complete circle around the sky.

Which parts you can see depend on your location on Earth and the time of year, but you can always see some part of the disk.

The galactic core of the Milky Way is located in the constellation Sagittarius, which is located to the South of me in Canada, and only really visible during the Summer. In really faint skies, the Milky Way is clearly thicker and brighter in that region.

Want to know the exact point of the galactic core? It’s right… there.

During the Winter, we’re looking away from the galactic core to the outer regions of the galaxy. It still has the same band of stars, but it’s thinner and without the darker clouds of dust that obscure our view to the galactic core.

How do astronomers even know that we’re in a spiral galaxy anyway?

There are two major types of galaxies, spiral galaxies and elliptical galaxies.

Elliptical galaxies are made up of so many galactic collisions, they’re nothing more than vast balls of trillions of stars, with no structure. Because we can see a distinct band in the sky, we know we’re in some kind of spiral.

The differences between elliptical and spiral galaxies is easy to see. M87 at left and M74, both photographed with the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: NASA/ESA
The differences between elliptical and spiral galaxies is easy to see. M87 at left and M74, both photographed with the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: NASA/ESA

Astronomers map the arms by looking at the distribution of gas, which pulls together in star forming spiral arms. They can tell how far the major arms are from the Sun and in which direction.

The trick is that half the Milky Way is obscured by gas and dust. So we don’t really know what structures are on the other side of the galactic disk. With more powerful infrared telescopes, we’ll eventually be able to see though the gas and dust and map out all the spiral arms.

If you’ve never seen the Milky Way with your own eyes, you need to. Get far enough away from city lights to truly see the galaxy you live in.

The best resource is “The Dark Sky Finder”, we’ll put a link in the show notes.

Have you ever seen the Milky Way? If not, why not? Let’s hear a story of a time you finally saw it.

And if you like what you see, come check out our Patreon page and find out how you can get these videos early while helping us bring you more great content!

Posted on by Brian Koberlein

What Would It Be Like To Fall Into A Black Hole?

This artist’s impression shows the surroundings of the supermassive black hole at the heart of the active galaxy NGC 3783 in the southern constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur). Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

Let’s say you happened to fall into the nearest black hole? What would you experience and see? And what would the rest of the Universe see as this was happening?

Let’s say you decided to ignore some of my previous advice. You’ve just purchased yourself a space dragon from the Market on the Centauri Ringworld, strapped on your favorite chainmail codpiece and sonic sword and now you’re going ride head first into the nearest black hole.

We know it won’t take you to another world or galaxy, but what would you experience and see on your way to your inevitable demise? And what would the rest of the Universe see as this was happening, and would they point and say “eewwwwww”?

If you were falling toward a black hole, most of the time you would simply feel weightless, just as if you were playing Bowie songs and floating in a most peculiar way in the International Space Station. The gravity of a black hole is just like the gravity of any other large mass, as long as you don’t get too close. But, as we’ve agreed, you’re ignoring my advice and flying dragon first into this physics nightmare. As you get closer, the gravitational forces on various parts of your and your dragon’s body would be different. Technically this is always true, but you wouldn’t notice it… at least at first.

Suppose you were falling feet first toward a black hole. As you got closer, your feet would feel a stronger force than your head, for example. These differences in forces are called tidal forces. Because of the tidal forces it would feel as if you are being stretched head to toe, while your sides would feel like they are being pushed inward. Eventually the tidal forces would become so strong that they would rip you apart. This effect of tidal stretching is sometimes boringly referred to as spaghettification.

I’ve made up some other names for it, such as My Own Private String Cheese Incident, “the soft-serve effect” and “AAAHHHHH AHHHH MY LEGS MY LEGS!!!”.

So, let’s summarize. You wouldn’t survive falling toward a black hole because you wouldn’t listen. Why won’t you ever listen?

A friend watching you fall toward a black hole would never see you reach the black hole. As you fall towards it, gravity would cause any light coming from you to be redshifted. So as you approached the black hole you would appear more and more reddish, and your image would appear dimmer and dimmer. Your friend would see you redden and dim as you approach, but never quite reach, the event horizon of the black hole. If they could still see you past this point, there would be additional red from the inside of you clouding up the view.

Artist's conception of the event horizon of a black hole. Credit: Victor de Schwanberg/Science Photo Library
Artist’s conception of the event horizon of a black hole. Credit: Victor de Schwanberg/Science Photo Library

Hypothetically, if you could survive crossing the event horizon of a black hole, what
would you see then? Contrary to popular belief, you would not see the entire future of the universe flash before you.

What you would see is the darkness of the black hole fill your view and as you approached the event horizon you would see stars and galaxies on the edge of your view being gravitationally lensed by the black hole. The sky would simply appear more and more black until you reach the event horizon.

Many people think that it is at the event horizon where you would be ripped apart, and at the event horizon all sorts of strange things occur. Unfortunately, this goes along with those who suspect black holes are actually some sort of portal. For a solar mass black hole, the tidal forces near the event horizon can be quite large, but for a supermassive black hole they aren’t very large at all.

In fact, the larger the black hole, the weaker the tidal forces near its event horizon. So if you happened to be near a supermassive black hole, you could cross the event horizon without really noticing. Would you still be totally screwed? YOU BETCHA!

What do you think? If you could drop anything into a black hole, what would it be? Tell us in the comments below.

Posted on by Elizabeth Howell

Push. Pull. Run. Lift! How Do We Make These Exercises Work In Zero G?

Expedition 38/39 astronaut Koichi Wakata (Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency) uses the advanced Resistive Exercise Device (aRED) in the Tranquility node of the International Space Station in February 2014. Credit: NASA

Here’s the thing about going to the International Space Station: No one can predict what you’ll need to do during your six-month stay there. Maybe something breaks and you need to go “outside” to fix it, in a spacesuit. Maybe you’re going to spend a day or three in a cramped corner, fixing something behind a panel.

Your body needs to be able to handle these challenges. And a big key behind that is regular exercise.

To get ready, you need to change things up frequently on Earth. Weights. Kettleballs. Pull-ups. Squats. Deadlifts. Interval training on cycles and treadmills. And more.

“Preflight, we throw everything but the kitchen sink at [astronauts],” said Mark Guilliams, a NASA astronaut health specialist who gets them ready before orbit. “We try to work as many different movements, using multiple joints and as many different planes of motion as possible “.

Some astronauts hit the gym every single day, such as the enthusiastic Mike Hopkins who did a whole YouTube series on exercising in orbit during Expeditions 37/38 earlier this year. Others prefer a few times a week. The astronauts also receive training on how to use the exercise devices they’ll have in orbit. Because time is precious up there, even when it comes to preserving your stamina.

Now imagine yourself in a weightless environment for half a year. Many of the exercises you do on the ground are impossible, unless you make certain modifications — such as strapping yourself down. Nevertheless, to make sure astronauts’ physiological systems remain at healthy levels, the space station has a range of gym equipment and the astronauts are allotted 2.5 hours for exercise daily.

That sounds like a lot, until you start factoring in other things. Setting up and taking down equipment takes time, such as when the astronauts harness themselves to the treadmill to avoid floating away. The resistance exercise machine has to be changed around for different exercises. This means that their “active” time is roughly 60 minutes for weightlifting and 40 minutes for aerobic, six days a week.

Compare that to what is recommended by the American Heart Association– 30 minutes, five days a week for light aerobic activity and two days of weightlifting — and you can see the time astronauts spend on exercise is not unreasonable. Also remember that the rest of the day, they have no gravity. Treadmill stats show the astronauts take only roughly 5,000 to 6,000 steps each day they use they use the treadmill, compared to some people’s goals of reaching 10,000 steps a day on Earth.

“When you compare the actual time the crew spends on exercise to that recommended by the AHA, it’s not a significant portion of their day that we’re asking them to participate in order for them to try and maintain their physiological health,” said Andrea Hanson, an exercise hardware specialist for the space station.

Expedition 26's Cady Coleman (NASA) calibrates a device intended to measure oxygen production while sitting on the Cycle Ergometer with Vibration Isolation System (CEVIS) in the Destiny laboratory of the International Space Station. Credit: NASA
Expedition 26’s Cady Coleman (NASA) calibrates a device intended to measure oxygen production while sitting on the Cycle Ergometer with Vibration Isolation System (CEVIS) in the Destiny laboratory of the International Space Station. Credit: NASA

So what’s the equipment the astronauts get to use? The pictures in this article show you a range of things. There’s the Cycle Ergometer with Vibration Isolation and Stabilization System (CEVIS) — a fancy name for the exercise bike. It has remained pretty much the same since it was brought to the space station back in 2001, for Expedition 2. Its major goal is to keep an astronaut’s aerobic capacity up for demanding spacewalks, which can take place for up to eight hours at a time.

The weight device has changed over time, however. The initial Interim Resistive Exercise Device used rubber to provide the resistive force and ended up being not enough for some astronauts, who found themselves reaching the designed capability limits long before their missions ended. (Here’s a picture of it.) Astronauts stopped using it after Expedition 28 in favor of the advanced Resistive Exercise Device, which instead uses piston-driven vacuum cylinders.

“The new device actually enables us to go up to 600 pounds of loading,” Guillams said. The IRED device could only give 300 pounds of resistance. So now, even the strongest astronaut can get a challenge out of ARED, he said.

Expedition 32 astronaut Sun Williams uses the COLBERT (Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill) in the Tranquility node of the International Space Station in August 2012. The treadmill was named after comedian Stephen Colbert. Credit: NASA
Expedition 32 astronaut Sun Williams uses the COLBERT (Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill) in the Tranquility node of the International Space Station in August 2012. The treadmill was named after comedian Stephen Colbert. Credit: NASA

The treadmill aboard the station is also a newer one. The second-generation device allows for faster speeds, and to even save programs for each individual crew member so that they can have customized workouts when they arrive on station. (The first one, “Treadmill With Vibration Isolation And Stabilization System“, was put on to an unmanned Progress spacecraft in 2013 to burn up in the atmosphere.)

By the way, the new treadmill (T2) is called the COLBERT, or Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill. It’s named after comedian Stephen Colbert, who in 2009 had his viewers vote to attach his name to a space station module when NASA held an open contest. When “Colbert” won, NASA elected to name the treadmill after him, and called the module Tranquility instead.

Whatever the treadmill’s name, the goal is to maintain astronaut bone and cardiovascular health while in orbit. A future story will deal with some of the scientific results obtained from more than a decade of ISS science in orbit.

This is part of a three-part series on astronaut health. Yesterday: Why human science is so hard to do in space. Tomorrow: How do you fight back against space health problems?

Posted on by Jason Major

Imagine What Could Be Done With a “Penny4NASA”

NASA's % of the U.S. budget over the years

If you’re reading this then you’re probably a big fan of space exploration. And while on one hand you could say that we are now living in a “golden age” of exploration, what with the ongoing missions there are around the Solar System and the new discoveries being made on an almost weekly basis about our Universe, on the other hand it seems like we are getting more and more “grounded” as human explorers, with still years to go before the first footprints are made on Mars, an ever-growing span since we last walked on the Moon, and steadily-shrinking or stagnant budgets that can’t support all the missions that DO exist — and sometimes cancel them altogether.

“We have discovered amazing places. But imagine what’s hiding where we haven’t even looked?”


In order for missions to ever get off the ground, they need to be funded. Right now NASA — still arguably the leader in space exploration among world agencies — receives a little over 0.4 percent of every U.S. tax dollar. Less than half a penny. That’s what NASA explores the Solar System with, what makes our knowledge of the Universe — from the farthest visible reaches right down to our own planet Earth — even possible. What if NASA were to receive a full one percent? A whole penny from every dollar? That’d still be only a quarter of what NASA worked with to put men on the Moon in 1969, but it’d be more than double what it gets now.

A penny for NASA… this is the goal of Penny4NASA.org, an outreach group that strives to increase the funding — if just by a little — of the world’s most accomplished, inspirational, and powerful space exploration administration. (Before… you know, it isn’t.)

The video above was created for Penny4NASA by artist and animator Brad Goodspeed, and reminds us of what NASA has achieved in its 50-year history, of what its goals are (or at least should be) and, unfortunately, why many of them have remained unattained. NASA needs support — our support — or else its candles will stay unlit and our windows and doors to the Universe will slowly but surely close.

How can you help? Well for one thing, stay excited about space and science (and get others excited too!) Interest is the key to making sure people don’t lose sight of what’s happening in the field; you might be surprised to hear the misinformation that’s been passed around. (No, NASA isn’t “dead.”) And let your policy-makers know that space exploration and the investment in technology and innovation that goes along with it is important to you — the Planetary Society has a convenient page where you can find links to write to your state representative here. And finally you can support groups like Penny4NASA, made up of enthusiastic young professionals who want to see our nation’s past successes in space exploration continued into their future.

“America is fading right now. Nobody’s dreaming about tomorrow anymore. NASA knows how to dream about tomorrow — if the funding can accommodate it, if the funding can empower it.”
– Neil deGrasse Tyson

Want more inspiration? Read this excerpt from Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Space Chronicles on TheWeek.com here.

Video credit: Brad Goodspeed/Penny4NASA.org

Posted on by Jason Major

NOvA Experiment Nabs Its First Neutrinos

The NUmI (Neutrinos from the Main Injector) horn at Fermilab, which fires protons that degrade into neutrinos. (Image: Caltech)

Neutrinos are some of the most abundant, curious, and elusive critters in particle physics. Incredibly lightweight — nigh massless, according to the Standard Model — as well as chargeless, they zip around the Universe at the speed of light and they don’t interact with any other particles. Some of them have been around since the Big Bang and, just as you’ve read this, trillions of them have passed through your body (and more are on the way.) But despite their ubiquitousness neutrinos are notoriously difficult to study precisely because they ignore pretty much everything made out of anything else. So it’s not surprising that weighing a neutrino isn’t as simple as politely asking one to step on a scale.

Thankfully particle physicists are a tenacious lot, including the ones at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermilab, and they aren’t giving up on their latest neutrino safari: the NuMI Off-Axis Electron Neutrino Appearance experiment, or NOvA. (Scientists represent neutrinos with the Greek letter nu, or v.) It’s a very small-game hunt to catch neutrinos on the fly, and it uses some very big equipment to do the job. And it’s already captured its first neutrinos — even before their setup is fully complete.

Created by smashing protons against graphite targets in Fermilab’s facility just outside Chicago, Illinois, resulting neutrinos are collected and shot out in a beam 500 miles northwest to the NOvA far detector in Ash River, Minnesota, located along the Canadian border. The very first beams were fired in Sept. 2013, while the Ash River facility was still under construction.

One of the first detections by NOvA of Fermilab-made neutrinos (Image courtesy of NOvA collaboration)
One of the first detections by NOvA of Fermilab-made neutrinos (Image courtesy of NOvA collaboration)

“That the first neutrinos have been detected even before the NOvA far detector installation is complete is a real tribute to everyone involved,” said University of Minnesota physicist Marvin Marshak, Ash River Laboratory director. “This early result suggests that the NOvA collaboration will make important contributions to our knowledge of these particles in the not so distant future.”

The 500-mile (800 km) path of the NOvA neutrino beam (Fermilab)
The 500-mile (800 km) subterranean path of the NOvA neutrino beam (Fermilab)

The beams from Fermilab are fired in two-second intervals, each sending billions of neutrinos directly toward the detectors. The near detector at Fermilab confirms the initial “flavor” of neutrinos in the beam, and the much larger far detector then determines if the neutrinos have changed during their three-millisecond underground interstate journey.

Again, because neutrinos don’t readily interact with ordinary particles, the beams can easily travel straight through the ground between the facilities — despite the curvature of the Earth. In fact the beam, which starts out 150 feet (45 meters) below ground near Chicago, eventually passes over 6 miles (10 km) deep during its trip.

According to a press release from Fermilab, neutrinos “come in three types, called flavors (electron, muon, or tau), and change between them as they travel. The two detectors of the NOvA experiment are placed so far apart to give the neutrinos the time to oscillate from one flavor to another while traveling at nearly the speed of light. Even though only a fraction of the experiment’s larger detector, called the far detector, is fully built, filled with scintillator and wired with electronics at this point, the experiment has already used it to record signals from its first neutrinos.”

The 50-foot (15 m) tall detector blocks are filled with a liquid scintillator that’s made of 95% mineral oil and 5% liquid hydrocarbon called pseudocumene, which is toxic but “imperative to the neutrino-detecting process.”  The mixture magnifies any light that hits it, allowing the neutrino strikes to be more easily detected and measured. (Source)

“NOvA represents a new generation of neutrino experiments,” said Fermilab Director Nigel Lockyer. “We are proud to reach this important milestone on our way to learning more about these fundamental particles.”

One of NOvA's 28 detectors (Fermilab)
One of NOvA’s 28 far detector blocks (Fermilab)

After completion this summer NOvA’s near and far detectors will weigh 300 and 14,000 tons, respectively.

The goal of the NOvA experiment is to successfully capture and measure the masses of the different neutrino flavors and also determine if neutrinos are their own antiparticles (they could be the same, since they lack  specific charge.) By comparing the oscillations (i.e., flavor changes) of muon neutrino beams vs. muon antineutrino beams fired from Fermilab, scientists hope to determine their mass hierarchy — and ultimately discover why the Universe currently contains much more matter than antimatter.

Read more: Neutrino Detection Could Help Paint an Entirely New Picture of the Universe

Once the experiment is fully operational scientists expect to catch a precious few neutrinos every day — about 5,000 total over the course of its six-year run. Until then, they at least now have their first few on the books.

“Seeing neutrinos in the first modules of the detector in Minnesota is a major milestone. Now we can start doing physics.”
– Rick Tesarek, Fermilab physicist

Learn more about the development and construction of the NoVA experiment below:


(Video credit: Fermilab)

Find out more about the NOvA research goals here.

Source: Fermilab press release

The NOvA collaboration is made up of 208 scientists from 38 institutions in the United States, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Greece, India, Russia and the United Kingdom. The experiment receives funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation and other funding agencies.