Neutrino mountain - 25/2/'14

After a long night of sleep at our new hotel in Toyama, we took a delicious and extensive breakfast. Besides fish, rice, sweet croissants and yoghurt, there was also a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, which was nice, as most of us where almost getting scurvy. It was great to see that everyone made good use of the weird clothes that were provided by the hotel. Especially the socks, that were looking like camel toes were fun to see. Of course I made some photographs of me and my breakfast. If you would like to see them you can contact the organization of this tour.

At 10:30 AM we started our journey to the Kamioka observatory, where a neutrino detector was waiting to reveal its secrets to us. On our way in the train, the view was amazing. Snow covered the mountains and the trees, small lakes and streams were appearing and disappearing everywhere I could look. It was almost as if we had stepped through the wardrobe and reached the magical realm of Narnia. It was even snowing for a while, which promised good snow conditions for some skiing. Unfortunately most of us were sleeping. For some people, apparently the long night wasn’t long enough. Anyway, after a long train journey, during which I took a lot of photographs, we reached Inotani station, where a small but cosy bus was waiting for us already. The bus was specially arranged for us and therefore had a sign in the front with the text ‘Study Project Sakura Zensen’ on it. Of course everyone had to take a picture of it, so I guess that we have 23 times the same image. During the bus trip, everyone was discussing about neutrinos and what they actually were, while I was making a lot of selfies. I can say that I have acquired quite some skills for this ingenious way of creating photographs.

When we finally reached our destination, we had to take our shoes off. Luckily, the bad smell from everyone’s feet was soon masked by the nice smell of food. Even though I was still chewing on my breakfast, it was time for a lunch! After this great, big lunch it was time to feed our brains and we could finally learn what a neutrino actually was. There was a nice and informative presentation about the neutrino’s, why they have mass and how they are detected. Unfortunately, since we don’t have a physics background, the talk was hard to grasp for most of us. However after the presentation we received a helmet and went into the observatory to see if we could understand a bit more after seeing the detector. Here the real excitement began. We went a kilometre under the ground in the cosy bus that I mentioned before. Of course I had to take some selfies, while I was wearing my helmet in the bus and in the cave. When we reached the Kamioka observatory, we were welcomed by a friendly, somewhat bold and somewhat big American, who was wearing a big Hawaiian blouse. He immediately received our attention with his nice and funny stories. He began with a story about some of the doors inside, on which several ‘famous’ people had written and a story about the emperor of Japan, who also visited the observatory. The man told us about all the rules and formalities regarding the emperor’s visit and about how the emperor didn’t want to wear a helmet, since he ought to be the boss of the mountain god. Next he told us about a ‘little’ mistake the engineers made during the creation of the Kamiokande. The photon detectors in the Kamiokande, which where hand blown by specialists, to obtain the high precision (they can detect up to a single photon), were not able to withstand the high pressure, resulting in 23 million dollar damage when they all exploded a few years ago. This man was really full of stories. After a few of them we finally continued our walk to the Kamiokande detector.

There were we, on top of the detector, a big spherical shaped cave with a height of about 50 meters appeared above us and only 5 millimetres of stainless steel was between our feet and the purest water in the world with which the detector was filled. Of course our guide was again entertaining us with his informative yet funny stories about the detector. The water was apparently so pure, that it would literally dissolve a human being after falling into the water. In stead of a wetsuit, divers had to were a special dry suit when they entered the water. After a group picture, the observation of some computers and electronics and about thousand funny stories from our guide, our ‘photographer’ told us that we had to leave. However the guide was still busy with his stories and just ignored the poor lady. He was just talking about Gadolinium, an element that he was very fond of, because he wanted to use this element to detect supernova neutrino’s. He once tried to carry a box of this element with him while traveling by plane. As the material was white and powdery, it raised some questions at the border security. When he yelled “Wait, don’t open that, it’s very pure!” he came to the conclusion that this was a bad idea and spent a long time in the interrogation room.

After visiting the Kamioka observatory, we said goodbye to Sander, one of our supervisors. He said thanks to everyone during a nice speech. At our hotel we had a nice diner, during which the waitresses got very shy and giggly because of our attention. Today was a good day.

By: Frank van der Hoek

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