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Project: NOvA Far Detector Building Location: Ash River, Minn. Client: Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory ()

Small Particles, Big Project Empowering Search for Universal Answers

By blasting a beam of 100 trillion per second through the examining how neutrinos — subatomic particles with virtually no Earth’s crust from Fermilab near Chicago, physicists aim to fill an mass — have been behaving and interacting since time began. informational void opened more than 13 billion years ago. The building encloses a detector that is 50 feet tall, 50 feet wide and Now they have a new resource to focus their efforts: a 41,000-square- 200 feet long, ranking as one of the world’s largest freestanding plastic foot concrete box filled with sensitive scientific equipment in structures. The detector is a collection of PVC tubes filled with Minnesota, near the Canadian border. 2.7 million gallons of scintillator, a fluid that flashes when a collides with an atom, something that occurs only a few times each day. The NOvA Far Detector Building, designed by Burns & McDonnell, accommodates equipment and operations for a Fermilab Burns & McDonnell and its project manager, Jack Steenken, led an collaboration of 208 scientists and engineers from 38 institutions integrated team in creating a durable and efficient building envelope

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Opposite page: Designers worked with the National Park Service to comply with the service’s Night Skies Program, which aims to reduce light pollution. The north side of the building was designed without windows so that sunlight would not be reflected toward Voyageurs National Park a mile away.

Top: Concrete walls are 60 feet tall, stretching beneath a concrete roof that features a clear span 63 feet long and a prestressed concrete beam system strong enough to support movable platforms needed for assembly and maintenance of massive scientific equipment.

Left: The NOvA Far Detector Building in Ash River, Minn., includes shielding features — 10 feet of granite along the perimeter of the detector enclosure, plus a concrete roof 4 feet thick and topped with six inches of barite aggregate — to help prevent cosmic rays from outfitted with reliable systems and remote site services, says Steven affecting experiments conducted underground. Dixon, project manager for Fermilab. Chicago-based team members Aerial photo by Dan Traska. Photos courtesy of Fermilab. from Fermilab and Burns & McDonnell worked together closely on the building project, which was delivered on time and within budget. What is a NEUTRINO? Now two years after construction of the detector began and about a year since the first events were recorded, Fermilab’s high-powered A neutrino is a neutral subatomic particle search for knowledge — looking at how neutrinos might illuminate the that is nearly a million times lighter than relationship between and antimatter and, therefore, the origin an electron. Neutrinos come in three Ve Vµ of the universe — is on. types, or flavors, and rarely interact with other particles: A trillion naturally occurring neutrinos from the sun and other celestial “(It’s) an important part of the worldwide particle- program,” objects pass through us each second. says Nigel Lockyer, Fermilab director. “We’re proud of the NOvA team Fermilab is studying how neutrinos change Vτ for completing the construction of this world-class experiment, and flavors (right). we’re looking forward to seeing the first results in 2015.”

For more about the NOvA project, visit www-nova.fnal.gov. For more information, contact Jack Steenken, 630-724-3231.

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