Function
The Neutrino Factory will create a fairly focused beam of neutrinos at one site on the Earth and fire it downwards, probably in two beams emitted in different directions from a racetrack shaped underground muon storage ring, until the beams resurface at other points. One example could be a complex in the UK sending beams to Japan (see Super-Kamiokande) and Italy (LNGS). The properties of the neutrinos will be examined at the remote sites to determine how neutrinos evolve over time. This will provide information about their masses and weak interaction properties.
The project is currently in the conceptual design stage. An international "Scoping Study" was completed in 2007 and an international effort to write a design report has now begun.
Many new technologies are being pioneered for this experiment, including the use of liquid metal jets as a pion production target, under test in the MERIT experiment, the use of Fixed Field Alternating Gradient (FFAG) accelerators, under test in the EMMA experiment, and liquid hydrogen energy reduction cavities for reducing the divergence in the muon beam during the intermediate stages.
Read more about this topic: Neutrino Factory
Famous quotes containing the word function:
“The information links are like nerves that pervade and help to animate the human organism. The sensors and monitors are analogous to the human senses that put us in touch with the world. Data bases correspond to memory; the information processors perform the function of human reasoning and comprehension. Once the postmodern infrastructure is reasonably integrated, it will greatly exceed human intelligence in reach, acuity, capacity, and precision.”
—Albert Borgman, U.S. educator, author. Crossing the Postmodern Divide, ch. 4, University of Chicago Press (1992)
“Uses are always much broader than functions, and usually far less contentious. The word function carries overtones of purpose and propriety, of concern with why something was developed rather than with how it has actually been found useful. The function of automobiles is to transport people and objects, but they are used for a variety of other purposes—as homes, offices, bedrooms, henhouses, jetties, breakwaters, even offensive weapons.”
—Frank Smith (b. 1928)
“The function of comedy is to dispel ... unconsciousness by turning the searchlight of the keenest moral and intellectual analysis right on to it.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)