The SNO equipment itself is currently being refurbished for use in the SNO+ experiment. ==Experimental motivation== The first measurements of the number of solar neutrinos reaching the Earth were taken in the 1960s, and all experiments prior to SNO observed a third to a half fewer neutrinos than were predicted by the Standard Solar Model.
All of the solar neutrino detectors prior to SNO had been sensitive primarily or exclusively to electron neutrinos and yielded little to no information on muon neutrinos and tau neutrinos. In 1984, Herb Chen of the University of California at Irvine first pointed out the advantages of using heavy water as a detector for solar neutrinos.
It was quickly identified as an ideal place for Chen's proposed experiment to be built, and the mine management was willing to make the location available for only incremental costs. The SNO collaboration held its first meeting in 1984.
The official go-ahead was given in 1990. The experiment observed the light produced by relativistic electrons in the water created by neutrino interactions.
Further measurements carried out by SNO have since confirmed and improved the precision of the original result. Although Super-K had beaten SNO to the punch, having published evidence for neutrino oscillation as early as 1998, the Super-K results were not conclusive and did not specifically deal with solar neutrinos.
The detector was designed to detect solar neutrinos through their interactions with a large tank of [water]. The detector was turned on in May 1999, and was turned off on 28 November 2006.
Because this interaction takes place on atomic electrons it occurs with the same rate in both the heavy and light water. ==Experimental results and impact== The first scientific results of SNO were published on 18 June 2001, and presented the first clear evidence that neutrinos oscillate (i.e.
The detector was designed to detect solar neutrinos through their interactions with a large tank of [water]. The detector was turned on in May 1999, and was turned off on 28 November 2006.
In 2007, the Franklin Institute awarded the director of SNO Art McDonald with the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics.
The SNO collaboration was active for several years after that analyzing the data taken. The director of the experiment, Art McDonald, was co-awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2015 for the experiment's contribution to the discovery of neutrino oscillation. The underground laboratory has been enlarged into a permanent facility and now operates multiple experiments as SNOLAB.
In 2015 the Nobel Prize for Physics was jointly awarded to Arthur B.
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