Welcome to my secret underground lair,’ he [Professor Mark Vagins] tells me as we get to his lab.” A new essay with spectacular photos shows the inside of the Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector inJapan.  The article highlights the joint work of Prof. Beacom and Prof. Vagins, who proposed in 2003that Super-Kamiokande should be upgraded by dissolving a gadolinium compound into its ultra-purewater.  This upgrade is now under construction.  With it, Super-Kamiokande will gain much greatersensitivity to detecting neutrons, which is expected to help them isolate the faint signal of neutrinosfrom all past core-collapse supernovae throughout the universe.  Neutrons are more often producedin the signal reactions than in noise reactions.

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