Talk:DUMAND Project

Error: Protons -> Muons ?

The text states that the the detector is looking for Cherenkov radiation of protons. In my opinion, this is most certainly untrue and should read muons. If nobody objects, I will change this shortly. GenghisDon (talk) 09:52, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I'll bet nobody commented on it since DUMAND was cancelled. But since I just read about DUMAND, I just looked at this Wiki article for the first time, and noticed the same oddity GenghisDon did.

However, I have to suspect that even his correction is not completely correct. As Mukhin describes the experimental setup [K. N. Mukhin, "Experimental Nuclear Physics" vol II, Mir, Moscow 1987]: "The apparatus is planned to consist of 10000 photomultiplier detectors arranged in the form of a space lattice with a step of 10-30 m.The apparatus will occupy a volume of 107 - 10^8 m^3 and will be placed at a depth of 5 km in the ocean."

What surprises me is the idea that this would have been the open ocean. But this could explain why such sophisticated signal processing was proposed to separate signals from each other and from the noise. For the description continues: "The principle of operation involves the registering of Cherenkov[yes, that is the way they spelled it] radiation in the optical range produced by fast charged particles created as a result of the interaction of high-energy muons or neutrinos with nuclei".

Indeed: in order to detect both muons and muon neutrinos, one must be able to detect charged particles resulting from a few different reactions, correlating some and separating others. Unfortunately, he does not go into any more details. But not all of these charged particles would themselves be muons. Otherwise, how would they separate muons formed by muon neutrinos from muons coming from the upper atmosphere? Yet the goals of the project were to measure both -- and measure other things as well. 98.96.81.70 (talk) 01:36, 9 July 2009 (UTC)