Ghosts at the South Pole: How a Giant Ice Cube Has Changed Astronomy Forever

GSFC / JPL-Caltech / NASA

Finding the Cosmic Source of High-Energy Neutrinos for the First Time, Announced on July 12, 2018 by the National Science Foundation, marks the dawn of a new era of neutrino astronomy. Since 1976, when pioneering physicists have been trying to build a large-scale, high-energy neutrino detector off the Hawaiian coast, the discovery of IceCube marks the triumphant conclusion of a long and difficult campaign led by several hundreds of scientists and engineers. The simultaneous detection of two separate astronomical messengers – neutrinos and light – is a powerful demonstration of how so-called multimessenger astronomy can provide the leverage we need to identify and understand some of the aspects of astronomy. the most energetic phenomena of the universe. Since its discovery as a source of neutrinos less than a year ago, the TXS 0506 + 056 blazar has been the subject of close scrutiny. The neutrino flux associated with it continues to provide in-depth information on the physical processes at work near the black hole and its powerful jet of particles and radiation, transmitted almost directly to Earth from its right location. at the shoulder of Orion

. Within a world-wide team of physicists and astronomers involved in this remarkable discovery, we have been drawn to this experience for its daring, physical and emotional challenge of working long hours in a brutally cold place while by inserting expensive and sensitive equipment. holes were drilled 1.5 miles deep in the ice and allowed all the work to be done. And, of course, for the thrilling opportunity to be the first to scan a brand new telescope and see what it reveals on the heavens.

A Glacial and Remote Neutrino Detector

At more than 9,000 feet above sea level and with average summer temperatures rarely breaking at 22 degrees Fahrenheit, the South Pole does not seem to be the best. great place to do anything, besides boasting to visit a sunny and sunny place for your nostrils. On the other hand, once you realize that the altitude is due to a thick layer of ultrapure ice made of several hundreds of thousands of years of snow and that the low temperatures therein. have frozen, it may not surprise you. telescope builders, the scientific benefits outweigh the forbidding environment. The South Pole now houses the world's largest neutrino detector, IceCube

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March 2015: The IceCube laboratory at the South Pole d & # 39; Amundsen-Scott The station in Antarctica hosts the computers that collect the raw data from the detector. Due to satellite bandwidth allocations, the first level of event reconstruction and filtering occurs in near real time in this lab. Erik Beiser / IceCube / NSF

It may seem odd that we need a detector as elaborate since it's about 100 billion these fundamental particles pass directly through your vignette. then, they slide effortlessly across the entire Earth without interacting with a single terrestrial atom

In fact, neutrinos are the second most ubiquitous particles, just behind the cosmic background photons scattered by the Big Bang. They comprise one quarter of the known fundamental particles. Yet, because they hardly interact with other topics, they are probably the least well understood.

To catch a handful of these elusive particles, and to discover their sources, physicists need large detectors 0.6 mile wide made of a clear ice-like material. Fortunately, Mother Nature provided this clear ice patch where we could build our detector.