Word: gallium
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Finding any kind of neutrino is a neat trick. The Baksan detector consists of four tanks filled with 30 tons of the element gallium, which liquefies at about room temperature. If a solar neutrino of the right energy interacts with the material in the tanks, a feat of atomic alchemy will transmute some of the gallium into germanium, another metallic element...
First scientists must eliminate other sources of radiation that may trigger false signals in the gallium. (To shield the experiment from cosmic rays, the detectors are installed in an underground tunnel, beneath a mile of rock.) About the only thing harder than proving that solar neutrinos passed through the gallium-filled tanks is proving that they didn...