Lead
Japan stores more than 50,000 tons of ultrapure water at a depth of 1,000 meters, which is used to study neutrinos, and the presence of this water makes Japan the country with the largest storage of ultrapure water in the world.
So what exactly does ultrapure water do, and how does Japan use ultrapure water to study neutrinos?
1. 50,000 tons of ultrapure water.
We all know that 1,000 meters underground is definitely not an environment for people to live, but this is where ultrapure water is stored in Japan, so what is the purpose of this water?
First of all, ultrapure water is an extremely pure water, and it is so pure that it can even react with neutrinos, which is why scientists want to use this water for research.
Stored at a depth of 1,000 meters to study neutrino presence and vibration, this ultrapure water is stored underground in mines across Japan, totaling more than 50,000 tons.
This ultrapure water is stored at a depth of 1,000 meters, and the place where it is stored is also specially designed for this purpose.
These places are called "Super Kamiokande Detectors", which are specially designed to store ultrapure water and study neutrinos, and each Super Kamiokande has 1,000 tons of ultrapure water in it, and there are 270 of these Super Kamiokande detectors, so Japan has a total of 57,000 tons of ultrapure water.
In these waters, a small amount of deuterium is also mixed to enhance the anti-aging ability of the water, and at the same time, it can also protect the purity of the water and prevent the impurities in the water from increasing.
2. Preparation of ultrapure water.
What is Ultrapure Water?
It hardly contains any impurities other than hydrogen and oxygen, and it is not even comparable to the pure water in life, because there will be some impurities in the pure water in life, but ultrapure water does not even have these.
Therefore, the preparation of ultrapure water is also very complicated, because it is composed of hydrogen and oxygen, so as long as the impurities of the water are removed, ultrapure water can be prepared.
However, there are still a lot of impurities in water, including some salts, metal ions, organic matter, bacteria, etc., to remove these impurities, it requires very advanced technology and equipment.
First of all, the preparation of ultrapure water starts from the raw water, which needs to be treated by reverse osmosis equipment and ion exchange equipment, so as to dispose of most of the impurities in the raw water, but the treated water is only industrial water, and it cannot be called ultrapure water.
Therefore, these industrial waters also need to be distilled twice, so as to produce "deionized water", and these deionized water also need to be treated by "electronic numerical control" equipment, so that these deionized water can be turned into ultrapure water.
However, this ultrapure water still cannot be used for storage, because there will be some impurities entering during the water treatment process, so these impurities need to be removed so that the real "ultrapure water" can be prepared.
With the development of modern science and technology, people have been able to remove these impurities and prepare real ultrapure water, which is called "18.2MΩ·cm", and the purity of this water is the highest.
Ultrapure water is a very scarce resource and has a wide range of applications, but because it is too pure, it is not suitable for drinking because it can cause damage to the human body.
Ultrapure water is mainly used in the preparation of semiconductors and nanofine ceramic materials, because these materials require a very high degree of purity, and ultrapure water meets this demand.
Of course, ultrapure water can also be used in some other aspects, such as in medicine, it can be used to prepare medicines, in the field of biological sciences, it can be used for biological preparation, sequencing, etc.
3. Neutrinos.
So what are neutrinos?
Neutrinos are extremely lightweight, essentially uncharged elementary particles that can only interact with other matter when their energy is very high, but the energy of neutrinos is very low.
Therefore, neutrinos can penetrate any matter on the earth, but we cannot perceive their existence, so neutrinos are also called "ghost particles".
There are three different types of neutrinos, which are electron neutrinos, muon neutrinos, and τ neutrinos, all three of which have very low energy and very light masses.
But the characteristics of neutrinos also make it difficult to detect, so scientists have invented a device called the "Super Kamiokande Detector" to detect neutrinos.
The detector is located in a mine at a depth of 1,000 meters in a mine where ultrapure water is stored, and the detector is mainly used to detect neutrinos.
The detector occupies a very large area, and in order to protect it from geothermal and other environmental influences, scientists store it in a mine 1,000 meters underground.
There are many photomultiplier tubes in this detector that can detect the presence and vibration of neutrinos, and whenever a neutrino passes through the detector, some light signals are generated, which are received by the photomultiplier tube and then converted into an electrical signal.
epilogue
This electrical signal is evidence that neutrinos have passed through the detector, and the data is uploaded to a central database where scientists analyze it.
These data can also be used to study the motion and vibration of neutrinos, which is of great significance for the development of science and technology and the exploration of the universe, and may also bring some new discoveries to human exploration.