What to do with all that extra Argon

In the September 2008 issue of Scientific American, there is a one page article about hunting for Neutrinos at FermiLab, looking for proof that there are more than four dimensions in our universe. Experiments have discovered unexplained behaviors of the little neutrinos, with one possibility is they are able to short-cut our four dimensions by slipping to where a total of 10 exist. No Sci-Fi here. It’s kinda the opposite of massive black holes where time gets screwed up. Here on the small scale, humans may be able to observe a whole other set of rules.

What’s Argon have to do with 10 dimensions? In the article, it discusses the proposal to build a new neutrino detector called MicroBooNE. The scientists want to use 170 tons of liquid Argon. Holy crap! Where do you find 1000 pounds of the stuff, not to mention 170 tons. Do you hit up the local chemistry supply shop for a few tanker trucks full?

Researchers are always looking forward, so after 2011 when MicroBooNE is up and running, they want to look at building a much bigger system, possibly containing hundreds of thousands of tons of Argon in a tank that would be the size of a football stadium. That’s a lot of gas to cool down.

So if you need Argon, just hoof it down to northern Illinois and knock on their door. That is, unless they’ve been able to shift the lab to the next state over following neutrinos into their hyper-dimensional highways. :)

-Mike M.