Fair weather physicist

I've been looking at Environment Canada's weather website frequently for the past two days. The forecast says there's a chance of thunderstorms in the Sudbury area. Why should I care about the weather when I am on night shift (and can't enjoy the outdoors anway) and the SNO detector is deep in the bottom of a nickel mine? The answer is simple: lighting can mess up a physics experiment.

Lightning strikes can disrupt the electrical power for an experiment. We have emergency battery power, but it doesn't last for longer than a couple of hours. If normal power isn't restored we have to turn off the detector. This sucks for two reasons. First, if the detector is off, you can't detect neutrinos. Big deal you say - the Sun shines all the time - the neutrinos will still be there when the detector is back on. However, if a supernova went off in our galaxy while the detector was off, we at SNO would be very sad.

Supernovae produce LOTS of neutrinos which could give invaluable information about stellar collapse. Of course, it's unlikely that a supernova would occur right when the detector was off - but it's not impossible. As a result we try to keep the detector on as much as possible.  Actually, to be more accurate, if a supernova occurred right when the detector went off, it wouldn't be a problem. The supernova would likely be many, many light years away so the neutrinos would take many, many years to reach Earth (the neutrinos would be travelling at very, very close to the speed of light). However, if the detector were off just when some neutrinos from a far off supernova were arriving at Earth, that would be a great tragedy.

But I digress... the second reason why it sucks to have the detector lose power is that the detector operator (me right now!) has a lot of work to do in making sure that the detector is turned off in an optimal manner. Plus, I'd have to phone lots of experts and wake them up in the middle of the night.

This brings me back to the weather... The Environment Canada website has lots of cool maps so that you can monitor the weather in realtime  yourself. Of particular interest to me are the radar images (showing rainfall - lightning's best friend) and the lighting maps (showing lightning activity). The upper picture shows the radar map for the area right now - no rain nearby for now. The lower picture shows lightning activity in Canada and the US - also no activity nearby right now.

For now I'll cross my fingers and hope the night continues to be lighting-free.

Comments

[m.visaya]

maxwell's demon and ion propulsion... (BPM-242)

[m.visaya]

an army of one black hole would be sufficient... (BSA-566)

[m.visaya]

->"

[m.visaya]

for some reason she insists on calling it The Urkel... (SED-428)