Well, we went to the Bradbury Science in the morning and discussed our presentation. Don did a mini-lecture on the phased array idea. We then went to White Rock overlook, which gives an awesome view of this pretty river, for a picnic lunch.
There, we finally met Todd Haines, supposedly one of our co-investigators on this trip. He's been away for most of this year's expedition - but Galen and Don assure us that in past years he's been a great help:o) He seemed like a very charismatic and interesting guy:o) It's a shame he wasn't around - I think I would have enjoyed his company a lot:o)

Well - I *really* liked his lecture:o) It was very interactive and cool - he asked us questions and helped us try and figure out what he was lecturing about:o) It was lots of fun watching Christine's face throughout the lecture - she would periodically light up as something finally reached understanding:o) I think that after the lecture, she still had little knowledge of what the topic was about - but I think she learned somthing, soo...:o)
Anyway, from what I can remember, we started talking about how we knew things were the way they were... somehow, we got talking about the sun and Todd explained how it was this giant fusion reaction. Something about protons plus Deutrons and Helium -3 and neutrinos popping out in this giant cycle. Neutrinos, he explained, are these theoretical weightless and unchanging particles.
There was some talk about quarks and their flavors - up, down, charmed, strange, top and bottom, I believe. we also discussed leptons, which included three types of neutrinos. he talked about some odd chart and how transformation of neutrinos could work in some directions and not in others.... (heh - don't remember that part well:o)).
Neutrinos can't be seen directly. Instead, we look for the interactions of the neutrinos and other particles.
By using Cherenkov radiation, we can detect light from moving neutrinos. Cherenkov radiation is caused when things go faster than light. Faster than light? But isn't light the fastest thing there is? In a vacuum, yes - but when traveling through other mediums, like water, light can get bent, etc. and then other things like neutrinos can travel faster. When things go faster than light, a cone of light is created away from where the particle traveled.
Using this information, these giant tanks filled with water will builting underground in these salt caves. Here, there would be the least other random particles traveling through. They were lined with PMTs, Photometric Tubes, which measured the amount of light that hit them. When neutrinos went through the giant tank, Cherenkov radiation would cause light to hit the PMT and the scientists could see the direction and some other information about the neutrino.
There was a problem, though - only 1/2 the amount of neutrinos they were looking for were appearing. They thought that there might be various ractions between neutrinos that would change them into other types of neutrinos like mu or tau [the Greek letters] neutrinos. This change might cause them not to show up with this method.

Well, after all that brain work, we went back to planning for our presentation. We also had some dinner at De Colores and back to the museum for another lecture. This on was something about mythology and interpretations of events in the sky. It was alright, but it wasn't terribly interesting - especially when compared to Todd's lecture:o)
We were going to go up to Fenton Hill, but since it was cloudly and such, we decided viewing wouldn't be very good if we did go up.
On a brighter note, we finally met the Durfee lady:o) She had her son with her, and apparently, their dog had come on the trip, too. That's what caused the problems yesterday - the kennel wouldn't house the dog and they had to take it back to the hotel. Well, she seemed pretty nice:o) I don't think she really understood what we were talking about in our lectures and such, but it was nice to meet the lady who put together all these awesome journals:o) She seemed to enjoy herself, too, soo thing turned out okay:o)

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This page last updated November 14, 2000.