ORR — The University of Minnesota is celebrating a milestone in creating an experimental particle detector that it says could eventually yield important information about the beginning of the universe.

More than 700 undergraduate students built the detector over four years in a large warehouse in Minneapolis. The structure located in far northeastern Minnesota is designed to detect sub-atomic particles called neutrinos. The neutrinos are shot out in an invisible beam to the detector from 500 miles away at a U.S. Department of Energy lab in Chicago.

University scientists are hoping that learning more about how the neutrinos behave will help them better understand how the universe worked during its early formation.

University of Minnesota President Eric Kaler, a Department of Energy representative and others will gather in Orr today to mark the completion of the 14,000-ton detector.

The detector is one of the largest plastic structures in the world.