The Majorana Demonstrator is being assembled and stored 4,850 feet beneath the earth’s surface in enriched copper to limit the amount of background interference from cosmic rays and radioactive isotopes. (Submitted image)
The Oak Ridge National Laboratory has begun delivery of germanium-76 detectors to an underground laboratory in South Dakota in a team research effort that might explain the puzzling imbalance between matter and antimatter generated by the Big Bang.
“It might explain why we’re here at all,” said David Radford, who oversees specific ORNL activities in the Majorana Demonstrator research effort. “It could help explain why the matter that we are made of exists.”
Radford, a researcher in ORNL’s Physics Division and an expert in germanium detectors, has been delivering germanium-76 to Sanford Underground Research Laboratory in Lead, S.D., for the project. After navigating a Valentine’s Day blizzard on the first two-day drive from Oak Ridge, Radford made a second delivery in March. [Read more…]
