Holes around the world

The late lamented SSC continues to provide grist for the literary mill -  I have just finished reading 'A Hole in Texas' by Herman Wouk, which I recommend as an entertaining page-turner. Its portrayal of a physicist's lifestyle is hardly typical - how many of us have jetted around the US on a private jet in the company of a nubile Congresswoman who was previously a movie star - but its Washington shenanigans are frequently hilarious. Also, you can amuse yourself trying to recognize some of the characters - the diminutive Director Emeritus of SLAC with a Germanic name is not very difficult to identify!

The SSC hole in the ground was abandoned, but this week I attended a workshop in the French Alps in Aussois, near Modane (see the first picture) about the physics one could do with a next-generation undergound detector, perhaps a megaton of water or a couple of hundred thousand tons of liquid Argon. Groups are proposing such experiments in Japan, the US and Europe, e.g., at Frejus which is also near Modane. I landed the job of giving the opening talk at the meeting, and emphasized that non-accelerator experiments such as these are potentially as important as collider experiments and non-collider accelerator experiments: http://nnn05.in2p3.fr/.

The two main physics topics on the agenda of such a large new experiment would be neutrino physics and continuing the search for proton decay. In addition to atmospheric neutrinos, such a detector could also look for astrophysical sources such as supernovae, either individual new explosions nearby in the Universe or the diffuse background from past explosions throughout the Universe, and also study the oscillations of neutrinos produced by accelerators, e.g., at CERN, as discussed in my previous blog entry. These neutrinos might be produced in the decays of low-energy pions (superbeams) or high-energy unstable nuclei (beta beams) or stored muons (neutrino factory). The hotel bar, which doubles as a discotheque, already has a 'superbeam', as seen in the second picture. Perhaps this is a good omen?

The first round of large underground water experiments, called IMB and Kamiokande, was motivated by the search for proton decay, but got famous instead because of their neutrino physics, particularly the observation of supernova 1987a and the discovery of neutrino oscillations. Perhaps the next round, even if their 'bread-and-butter' physics is neutrino physics, including the search for CP violation, might actually become famous because of some 'jam' provided by proton decay. This is still very much expected in grand unified theories, and could well be accessible to such a hole in the ground!

Comments

[Plato]

My latest entry, works towards the comprehension of microstate blackholes. Discovering these similarites in the deveopement of theoretics and propositions in supersymetrical realities, can this stance be irrefutably stated setting the stage?

To me it is very significant. Why do not some of the academic cohorts not see what is accomplished here?

I provide a little history to help in this regard, but I am sure you could supply a much deeper insight into what Auger has done for us. You gave us hint of this in a earlier article.

[Bibhas De]

If you are talkintg about 'bread and butter' physics, check this out:

http://www.geocities.com/bibhasde/physicsessays.html

[m.visaya]

detection of gravity waves using blackholes:
(nu*(dg/dt) + g*(d nu/dt)) = (mg[i]v[i]^-3)*((pi*r^2*c)^2), (standard convention applies)