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David Hanes |
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Queen's University is the headquarters of the multi-national Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO). This renowned experiment has completely resolved the long-standing Solar Neutrino Problem, with results that require nothing less than a wholesale revision of the standard model of particle physics. The heavy-water-based SNO experiment has now ended, and the deep underground site is being enormously extended and readied for a suite of dark-matter detection experiments of considerable astrophysical interest, in the newly-dubbed SNOLAB facility. As the Head of the Department (of Physics, Engineering Physics, and Astronomy), I have been privileged to watch these developments with an astronomer's passion but (it must be admitted) without the very deep technical understanding enjoyed by my particle physics colleagues. I will present a brief but non-technical discussion and appreciation, well illustrated, of the accomplishments and promise of SNO / SNOLAB. I will describe to you the enormous engineering challenges represented by the construction of this kind of facility at enormous depth in the Sudbury mines of Northern Ontario. |