NOvA gets full construction approval

Construction workers prepare to pour concrete for the loading dock at the future site of the NOvA detector on Oct. 20 in Ash River, Minn.

NOvA experiment collaborators have more to celebrate this holiday season.

The neutrino experiment recently received Critical Decision-3b approval from the Department of Energy. The decision signifies approval for the start of full construction. DOE had approved long-lead procurements and limited construction activities for the NOvA experiment when they granted CD-3a approval in October 2008. Fermilab now can continue construction of buildings on the Fermilab site and in Ash River, Minn., as well as complete the Fermilab accelerator upgrades and start neutrino detector fabrication.

"This is a big deal," said NOvA project manager John Cooper. "This means we can move forward on the full project scope within the constraints of approved funding by Congress."

Scientists will use the NOvA experiment to analyze the mysterious behavior of neutrinos and look for muon neutrinos oscillating to electron neutrinos. Ultimately, scientists hope to understand whether neutrinos contributed to the imbalance between matter and antimatter that enables our matter-dominated universe (including ourselves) to exist.

A construction worker placing concrete forms for the NOvA service facility.

The experiment involves 180 scientists from some 28 institutions who have worked hard to get the experiment ready for full construction.

"So many people have worked so long and hard to reach this point within the NOvA collaboration and the project management — it is a great feeling to have this level of support and approval from DOE," said Pepin Carolan, DOE NOvA project director. "The team is very highly motivated to move full steam ahead to get the work done safely, on schedule and within budget, and then to get on with the science."

Carolan also pointed out that the project's success was made possible by the partnership between Fermilab and the University of Minnesota. A cooperative research agreement between the U.S. Department of Energy and the University of Minnesota supports the construction of a NOvA facility.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provided a total of $55 million (to Fermilab and the University of Minnesota) toward completion of the NOvA project. This includes funding supporting purchase of key high-tech components and commodities for the detector from U.S. companies, allowing these firms to retain and hire workers. It also includes the funding for the University of Minnesota's contract to construct the detector hall in Ash River, Minn., awarded in May 2009.

Read articles about work for NOvA funded by the ARRA.

— Rhianna Wisniewski

November moon

AD's Greg Vogel took this photograph of the moon on Nov. 1 from his balcony. The next full moon is Dec. 2.

Fermi Telescope finds more new pulsars

From symmetry breaking, Nov. 2, 2009

Today at the 2009 Fermi Symposium in Washington DC, postdoctoral researcher Lucas Guillemot of the Max Planck Institute reported that the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has detected eight more pulsars that had not been seen in other wavelengths of light, bringing the total of these gamma-ray-only objects to 24. It also bagged one new gamma ray millisecond pulsar. However, Guillemot said these results are preliminary and have not been submitted for publication yet.

Pulsars are the remnants of supernovas - stars that run out of fuel, expand and then collapse into masses heavier than the sun but with an average radius of only 10 km. Pulsars emit powerful jets of radiation, and as they rotate the radiation sweeps across the cosmos like the beam from a light house. From Earth, it looks as though the neutron star's light is pulsing on and off.

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