ICARUS prepares to chase a fourth neutrino

In February, scientists at Fermilab began cooling down the ICARUS neutrino detector and filling it with 760 tons of liquid argon. Argon. It's all around us. It's in the air we breathe, incandescent lights we read by and plasma globes many of us played with as children. In liquid form, argon is also an inexpensive and effective target for neutrino physics experiments. On February 21, scientists at the US Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory began cooling down ICARUS--the l...