Why Japan is Hollowing Out a Mountain

Japan is building something huge inside a mountain.

Corrections and clarifications:

When complete, the cavern will be 94m high.
The observatory sits 600m below the mountain peak
The water in the tank undergoes further treatment with Ion exchange resin and other means
to create water so pure that the transmitted light does not attenuate for more than 100 metres

Research sources -

Additional footage and images courtesy of Kamioka Observatory, ICRR, The University of Tokyo / NHK Enterprises, Inc.

Follow Get Construction Talking

Listen to The World's Best Construction Podcast by The B1M

#construction #engineering #science

Ripping and/or editing this video is illegal and will result in legal action.

© 2024 The B1M Limited

[TheOtherSteel]

I recall watching a documentary about the first version back in the 1980s.

Apparently, divers were needed for inspection and maintenance. When they entered, the water was so pure that the divers had fears of heights and falling because visually, they could not see the water, despite feeling it around them through their suits.

[opfgnyj]

My physics professor told my class about this project back when it was still being planned.
Amazing how it's finally getting realised now

[mrpeeng]

For the same price, NYC renovated 30 feet of space in grand central.

[northseawolf]

A lot of people talking about the cost...for an advanced first world nation to build this in the middle of a solid mountain for well below $1bn is incredible.
For comparison, in the UK, £500m will get you about 10% of a cut and cover tunnel through relatively flat countryside, and won't include all the legal crap that precedes construction (if it even happens)

[crogon-yt]

Big infrastructure projects like bridges and dams are pretty cool, but huge science experiments like this are just awesome. I'd love to hear more about the engineering challenges behind gravity wave detectors, telescopes, particle accelerators and such.

[jimmyrh]

5:16 "water so pure it's capable of dissolving metal" ... The University of Tokyo will be proud of how you are sharing this great project with the world.

[cougar]

I worked in that tank during the summers of 2001 and 2002 for the upgrade and rebuild! My PhD thesis was on techniques to better estimate the cosmic muon backgrounds for sites like superK. Cheers!

[johncampbell]

"How do you build something like this in the middle of a mountain?"
Dwarves: "Hold our beer."

[ntatenarin]

As a physics nerd, I freaked out when I saw the thumbnail. Makes sense putting this in the mountain. Awesome video!

[ChrisRT]

I love these huge science experiments, I wish more of humanity's efforts went towards knowledge.

[andrewsantos]

Living my childhood dream as one of the scientists in the Super-K and Hyper-K collaborations, so it’s awesome to see our experiments getting hyped up 🤘 (I’m on the team chasing neutrinos coming from massive star explosions in space, or “supernovae”)! We’re excited for the physics we can do through the rest of Super-K’s lifetime and then on to Hyper-K. Keep an eye out for our field—the future is even brighter than that Cherenkov radiation you mentioned 😎 thanks for the video!

(And never hesitate to ask a Super-K/Hyper-K scientist about what they do because I think we could all talk for hours about it haha)

[hanswoast]

Great video! Physicist here. You got one thing slightly wrong:

All particles are either of type boson (spin is a whole number & that is usually a force transmitting particles) or fermion (spin ist NOT a whole number & that is usually some kind of matter). Neutrinos are of type fermion (some kind of matter) and quite heavy for their size, but they hardly react with any force we know off. On the particle level, measuring something is the same as interacting with it. And since neutrinos do not really interact with other particles, it is absurdly hard to measure them - or even show they exist. That is also why neutrinos are good possible candidates for what constitutes dark matter. And since dark matter is a huge topic (gaping whole in current cosmology), neutrinos are especially interesting.

Thanks for shining light on this topic. The construction side itself is already nuts. Love it!

[xe]

Finally, Japan’s getting its own stargate base.

[andrewday]

PBS Nova had a great 1 hour show about an American project like this years ago. The divers said floating in the water to do maintenance was unnerving as the clear water made you feel like you were floating in space.

[DanielAlanBryan]

Seriously this is just a cover story for them to build a space to contain Godzilla.😂

[nands]

I remember recommending that you create a video for Hyper Kamiokande a few months back. Thank you for actually doing it and making people aware of the experiment! 👏🏽

[ddmarsh]

Nice little physics lesson to start us off. One note is that neutrinos do interact with other matter (or else how would we detect them) it’s just extremely rare. That’s why we need a giant vat of water under a mountain, to act as a filter, reducing all the noise of other particle interactions which would far exceed any interactions by neutrinos. As you mention later, it is the interaction with an electron that the observatory measures. Anyways, love the channel!

[Travlinmo]

I did a summer job helping rebuild the last one after a major failure in 2000. Kamioka and Toyama are wonderful places to live and work. Another neutrino project you may want to check out would be the Tower Sudan mine experiment in Northern Minnesota.

[mkst]

My friend’s brother worked on the IceCube neutrino detector at the south pole. He worked on doing the drilling, using a hot water drill to holes that they dropped strings of detectors into. It is, I believe, 1 cu km in size.

[raevies]

For a moment I thought I'm watching a Kurzgesagt video.