A large project that will seek a small effect was inaugurated with a groundbreaking ceremony on 13 October. The Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment, located in China’s Guangdong Province about 55 km northeast of Hong Kong, is designed to measure θ13, the last unknown neutrino mixing angle.
The experiment will use eight movable underground detectors to monitor six local nuclear power reactors for the disappearance of electron antineutrinos (see Physics Today, November 2006, page 31).
The ceremony marked the start of excavation for tunnels and experiment halls. It was attended by Chinese and American officials; Robin Staffin, associate director of the US Department of Energy’s Office of High Energy Physics, is second from left in the photo. (Staffin has since become an adviser to Ray Orbach, DOE’s under secretary for science.) The experiment is expected to be fully up and running in 2010. Chunli Bai, the...
