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The starting point for the muon-neutrino beam was at the 7-kilometer-in-circumference CERN facility Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS), which is located in Geneva, Switzerland.
The Gran Sasso laboratory (LNGS), which is located near the Gran Sasso mountain in central Italy, between the towns of L'Aquila and Teramo, was the ending point for the particle beam.
The distance between Geneva, Switzerland and Gran Sasso, in central Italy, is approximately 730 kilometers (450 miles). The trip takes less than three milliseconds (three one-thousandths of a second) for the muon-neutrino particles.
The OPERA experiment, according to its website "has been 'designed to perform the most straightforward test of the phenomenon of neutrino oscillations."
And, "This experiment exploits the CNGS high-intensity and high-energy beam of muon neutrinos produced at the CERN SPS in Geneva pointing towards the LNGS underground laboratory at Gran Sasso, 730 km away in central Italy.'
OPERA stands for 'Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus.'
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The May 31, 2010 CERN press release Particle Chameleon Caught in the act of Changing states, 'This is a significant result, providing the final missing piece of a puzzle that has been challenging science since the 1960s, and giving tantalizing hints of new physics to come.'
Antonio Ereditato is a spokesperson for the OPERA experiment. He states that the discovery is: 'an important result which rewards the entire OPERA collaboration for its years of commitment and which confirms that we have made sound experimental choices. We are confident that this first event will be followed by others that will fully demonstrate the appearance of neutrino oscillation".
Lucia Votano is the director of the Gran Sasso laboratories. He states, "The OPERA experiment has reached its first goal: the detection of a tau neutrino obtained from the transformation of a muon neutrino, which occurred during the journey from Geneva to the Gran Sasso Laboratory.'
Votano adds, 'This important result comes after a decade of intense work performed by the Collaboration, with the support of the Laboratory, and it again confirms that LNGS is a leading laboratory in Astroparticle Physics'.
Please read the before-mentioned CERN press release for additional history on the efforts of several individuals and groups of scientists in bringing about this important discovery in particle physics.
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And, 'CERN's neutrino beam was first switched on in 2006, and since then researchers on the OPERA experiment have been carefully sifting their data for evidence of the appearance of tau particles, the telltale sign that a muon-neutrino has oscillated into a tau-neutrino. Patience of this kind is a virtue in particle physics research'¦.'
INFN President Roberto Petronzio explains further: 'This success is due to the tenacity and inventiveness of the physicists of the international community, who designed a particle beam especially for this experiment. In this way, the original design of Gran Sasso has been crowned with success. In fact, when constructed, the laboratories were oriented so that they could receive particle beams from CERN'.
And CERN director general Rolf Heuer adds the last words, 'This is an important step for neutrino physics. My congratulations go to the OPERA experiment and the Gran Sasso Laboratories, as well as the accelerator departments at CERN. We're all looking forward to unveiling the new physics this result presages.'
The CERN article concludes with 'While closing a chapter on understanding the nature of neutrinos, the observation of neutrino oscillations is strong evidence for new physics. In the theories that physicists use to explain the behaviour of fundamental particles, which is known as the Standard Model, neutrinos have no mass.'
'For neutrinos to be able to oscillate, however, they must have mass: something must be missing from the Standard Model. Despite its success in describing the particles that make up the visible Universe and their interactions, physicists have long known that there is much the Standard Model does not explain.'
'One possibility is the existence of other, so-far unobserved types of neutrinos that could shed light on Dark Matter, which is believed to make up about a quarter of the Universe's mass.'
