Huge ice cube looks for neutrinos at South Pole

William Atkins
Monday, 20 December 2010 23:22

Science - Energy

The University of Wisconsin has built a gigantic ice cube-like telescope underneath the ice of the South Pole that will search for neutrinos, and help us learn more about our Universe.

The facility is called the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. It consists of over 5,000 optical sensors buried over a one-cubic-kilometer volume of the Antarctic near the South Pole.

Specifically, it is built at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, developed and supervised by personnel from the University of Wisconsin, at Madison.

It is considered the largest neutrino telescope in the world.

Its mission is to look for high-energy neutrinos (in the range of tera-electron volts, TeV, or one trillion electron volts), which are miniscule subatomic particles that do not have a charge, are about the size of an electron, but act more like a neutron.

Neutrinos are electrically neutral (uncharged) leptons, which rarely interact with other matter. However, when they do interact with something else they create charged leptons (such as electrons, muons, or taus).

When such an interaction occurs and these charged particles are created, then Cherenkov radiation is also created. And, this Cherenkov radiation can be measured by scientists.

The completion of the telescope complex occurred on Friday, December 17, 2010, as the last of the sensors were buried, some of them as far down below the icy surface as 2.4 kilometers (1.5 miles).

Page two continues.