Dirty DUNE: The 3 Billion Dollar Boondoggle Has Started

Scientists believe that when two very high-energy photons collide, they produce equal amounts of matter and antimatter, and that when matter collides with antimatter, it is converted into high-energy photons. Such a belief is based on what scientists have observed in particle accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider, where particles are accelerated to near the speed of light before they collide with each other. But such conclusions about matter, antimatter and photons lead to a great mystery as to why there is any matter at all in the universe.

Let us imagine the early minutes of the Big Bang about 13 billion years ago, when the density of the universe was incredibly great. At that time the universe should have consisted of energy, matter and antimatter. The energy should have been in the form of very high energy photons that were frequently colliding with each other. All such collisions should have produced equal amounts of matter and antimatter. For example, a collision of high energy particles with sufficient energy creates a matter proton and an antimatter particle called an antiproton. So the amount of antimatter shortly after the Big Bang should have been exactly the same as the amount of matter. As a CERN page on this topic says, "The Big Bang should have created equal amounts of matter and antimatter in the early universe." But whenever a matter particle touched an antimatter particle, both would have been converted into photons. The eventual result should have been a universe consisting either of nothing but photons, or some matter but an equal amount of antimatter. But only trace amounts of antimatter are observed in the universe. A universe with equal amounts of matter and antimatter would have been uninhabitable, because of the vast amount of lethal energy released when even a tiny bit of matter comes in contact with a tiny bit of antimatter.

The mystery of why we live in a universe that is almost all matter (rather than antimatter) is called the baryon asymmetry problem or the matter-antimatter asymmetry problem.  There is no reasonable prospect that this problem will be solved in our lifetimes.  It's like the problem of "why is there something rather than nothing?" That's not a problem we can expect to solve in our lifetimes. 

But sometimes when scientists have embarked on a gigantically polluting boondoggle, they may evoke the matter-antimatter asymmetry problem to try to sanctify their misguided schemes.  That is what is going on with a project called DUNE, which seems to be one of the more ill-conceived, wasteful and polluting projects scientists have ever devised. DUNE stands for Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. An article in the journal Science tells us that DUNE "is now expected to cost $3 billion, 60% more than the preliminary estimate, and construction has slipped 4 years, with first data expected in 2029."

On its "Frequently Asked Questions" page, the web site of the DUNE project tries to answer the question, "Why is DUNE scientifically important?" It fails to answer that question in any remotely persuasive way.  It says, "DUNE aims to find out, for example, whether neutrinos are the key to solving the mystery of how the universe came to consist of matter rather than antimatter," but it gives no rationale for thinking that such a thing is true, and no explanation of how it might be discovered that such a thing is true.  There's a link to a video which also fails to explain any rationale for thinking that neutrinos could possibly be the explanation for the matter/antimatter asymmetry problem. The video discusses the matter/antimatter asymmetry problem, and then tries to hint that the answer may lie in neutrinos, without ever justifying such an insinuation. 

Trying to play up the importance of neutrinos (which make up a vastly smaller fraction of the universe's mass than protons), the video makes the claim (at the 54 second mark) that neutrinos are "the most abundant matter particles in the universe."  Scientists actually believe that the amount of matter in protons is many times greater than the amount of matter in neutrinos, and that the most abundant matter substance in the universe is some other undiscovered type of matter called dark matter, which is believed to exist in vastly greater mass amounts than either protons or neutrinos. A neutrino has only about a millionth of the mass of an electron, and each proton is 1836 times more massive than each electron.  In an article entitled "The Composition of the Universe," a PhD tells us that "neutrinos are also part of the universe, although only about 0.3 percent of it." At an expert answers site, we read the following:

"The problem with neutrinos is that they are very light. There is no conceivable mechanism that would produce enough of them to make up a significant percentage of the total mass of the universe."

Neutrinos are "bit players" in the physical drama of the universe, and make up very much less of the universe's mass than protons. That means it is pretty much impossible that the matter/antimatter asymmetry problem will be solved by studying neutrinos. There is no solid scientific rationale for spending billions of dollars studying cosmic "bit players" such as neutrinos. 

Like LIGO, the DUNE project will be very expensive in terms of its global warming cost. One of its detectors will be constructed more than a kilometer underground. That kind of deep digging has a high cost in terms of carbon dioxide emissions, and tends to create pollution in a variety of ways.  But you would never know that from a very misleading document that was filed, one claiming that this massive construction project will have "no significant impact," by which it means environmental impact.

Entitled "Finding of No Significant Impact and Floodplain Statement of Findings," the document tells us the following:

"Construction of the underground detector—necessary to eliminate cosmic radiation that could interfere with the detector—would require excavation and transportation of a large volume of rock. The rock would be transferred to either the Gilt Edge Superfund site, or to the Open Cut in Lead, a former surface mining pit that was part of the former Homestake Mine. Truck, conveyor and/or a rail system would be used. The Gilt Edge Superfund site is a highly disturbed former gold mine in Deadwood....Up to 950,000 cubic yards (yd³) of soils would be removed and re-used or stored on site. Up to 45,000 yd³ of rock would be excavated, but important geological resources would not be affected."

The document tells us that up to a million cubic yards of soil and rock would be excavated by the DUNE project, and much of it  transported and dumped at some pit or mine. This project has very obviously a very large environmental cost, including a very large global warming footprint. But contrary to all the facts it is stating, the document claims there will be "no significant impact" on the environment. It states that the DUNE construction project "would not individually or cumulatively have a significant effect on the quality of the human environment."  You might as well claim that leveling fifty city blocks in Manhattan would have no significant effect on the environment. 

The government visual below (referring to arsenic contamination) reminds us of one of the countless reasons why massive hard-rock removal projects and massive soil removal projects can have very big environmental impacts.  At the end of the yellow line shown below is where DUNE will be massively involved. 

The DUNE project is an environmentally reckless boondoggle "white elephant" project. Neutrinos are mere bit players in the physical makeup of the universe. There is no reason to think that the DUNE neutrino project will do anything to solve the great mystery of why the Big Bang did not yield a universe with equal amounts of matter protons and antimatter antiprotons, or nothing but photons arising from the combination of such antimatter and matter. And in the unlikely event that the scientists who work on the DUNE project ever happen to report some five-sigma event relating to neutrinos, we should be suspicious about  their reports.  Once a project has been born with the very misleading claim that digging a million cubic yards of soil and rock will have no significant environmental impact, then we should be suspicious about the accuracy of all further statements related to such a project. 

Let us imagine the best result that might happen from the DUNE project. There might be discovered some reason why the Big Bang should have produced more neutrinos (made of matter) than anti-neutrinos (made of antimatter). But it would be worth very little to know such a thing. What we are interested in knowing is not why the Big Bang might have produced some universe with only ghostly neutrinos as matter, but why the Big Bang left us with so many protons that are vastly more massive than neutrinos. The precise name for this problem is the baryon asymmetry problem or the matter-antimatter asymmetry problem.  It is the problem of why the observed number of baryons (protons and neutrons) in the universe is more than trillions of times greater than the number of antibaryons (antiprotons and antineutrons), contrary to what the Big Bang theory predicts. There is no hope that the baryon asymmetry problem can be solved by doing experiments with neutrinos, because neutrinos are not baryons.  There is no point at all in spending three billion dollars trying to establish why there might exist a universe with only neutrinos, because we don't live in such a universe.  There is a point in trying to figure out why we live in a universe with so many baryons.  But the DUNE project would do nothing to solve that problem. 

When I wrote an earlier post I called DUNE a "billion-dollar boondoggle." Now I read in Scientific American this: "But last year, the megaproject’s price tag was reevaluated to more than $3 billion for the first phase alone—roughly double the original estimate for the entire endeavor." Now DUNE stands as something three times worse: a three-billion dollar boondoggle.  And maybe it will become a six-billion dollar boondoggle. The story also tells that the whole DUNE project may be superfluous, because some Japanese project will accomplish the same scientific goals.  We read the following, which has a "they can't get their story straight" ring to it:

" 'There is very strong support within the community for [LBNF/DUNE] to happen,' says Orebi Gann. Yet in internal documents seen by Scientific American, a current co-spokesperson for DUNE successfully ran for election earlier this year on the basis that 'LBNF/DUNE is currently experiencing a poor acceptance in the [high-energy physics] community … seriously challenging the future of DUNE. ' ”

The Scientific American article raises quite a few red flags. We read this:

"Most everyone agrees that with billions of dollars already allocated to the megaproject—by the U.S. and international partners—there is no turning back.  'The "sunk cost" fallacy is always present when you’re this far down the road,' Asaadi says. Luminaries of the particle physics community are haunted by the cancellation of the Superconducting Super Collider, a multibillion-dollar particle accelerator, in the early 1990s. Congress pulled funding after the budget ballooned and dubious spending on costly parties and catered lunches was revealed. As a result, 'particle physics moved to Europe,' says Francis Halzen, principal investigator of the IceCube neutrino experiment. 'Hopefully everybody has learned that by killing a project, the money doesn’t return to you, or even to science.' Then again, unquestionably supporting a major project whose ‘world’s first’ aspirations may no longer be achievable carries risks, too. 'We are in a catch-22. Cancellation of DUNE would be a black-eye to the credibility of high-energy physics,' an anonymous source and member of the DUNE collaboration told Scientific American. 'We need to find a way out of this, and the way out isn’t obvious. ' ”

I had criticized the DUNE project as early as 2014, and I warned in my 2020 post that DUNE would be an environmental disaster. At the end of the current wikipedia.org article on DUNE, we read this statement that suggests I wasn't crying wolf:

"In June 2021, plumes of dust rising from the Open Cut due to DUNE construction led to complaints from businesses, homeowners, and users of a nearby park.^[52] Complaints continued through spring 2022 without adequate response from Fermilab management, resulting in the South Dakota Science and Technology Authority shutting down excavation on March 31, 2022.^[53] An investigation ensued in which the Fermilab management team admitted to failures in protocols, and instigated new measures to prevent black dust from leaving the Open Cut.^[54] [55] With these assurances in place, Fermilab was allowed to resume rock dumping on April 8, 2022." 

The DUNE project is the latest evidence that physicists can be very bad at spending money, wasting billions and decades on fruitless efforts. In a recent article in the New York Times, a physicist makes this confession, referring to imaginary "supersymmetrical particles" that physicists wasted endless hours speculating about, without ever discovering:

"That has been a little bit crushing; for 20 years I’ve been chasing the supersymmetrical particles. So we’re like deer in the headlights: we didn’t find supersymmetry, we didn’t find dark matter as a particle."