One of the World's Biggest Telescopes Is Buried Beneath the South Pole

FoxNews.com ^ | December 17, 2010 | Blake Snow

[ColdOne]

Like exploding stars, black holes, dark matter? How about cosmic intrigue, deep space astronomy , or origins of the universe?

Then you’re gonna love this.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin are putting the finishing touches on a giant underground telescope buried beneath the South Pole to help understand said phenomenon.

[Ciexyz]

The South Pole explorers of the past would be amazed.

[ColdOne]

ping

[UCANSEE2]

Thanks for posting the article.

Very interesting subject.

[RobRoy]

The “planet x” people have been referring to this thing as a sort of “conspiracy” to build this to watch a “cataclysmic” event headed toward earth from our “blind side” (directly south).

:)

[DariusBane]

How is this being paid for?

Last I heard the treasury is broke.

[BunnySlippers]

Cool. Thanks for posting.

[mikrofon]

One of the World's Biggest Telescopes Is Buried Beneath the South Pole
By Blake Snow

[JoeProBono]

An aerial view of the South Pole with the South Pole Station to the left of the runway and IceCube to the right.

[Vendome]

Amazing

[smokingfrog]

“From deep within the ice, the telescope will observe the full sky, both northern and southern hemispheres simultaneously all the time,” Halzen told FoxNews.com. “We do not have to point the telescope.”

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Huh? How’s that supposed to work? Doesn’t sound like a ‘telescope’ to me.

[smokingfrog]

http://pole.uchicago.edu/public/telescope_optics.html#Downstream

[humblegunner]

From deep within the ice, the telescope will observe the full sky, both northern and southern hemispheres simultaneously all the time

They also have a massive geothermally-heated underground mushroom patch.

They can see any damn thing they want.

[Williams]

Unless I’m mistaken, netrinos are theoretical particles which never have been observed in nature? Neutrinos, if they exist, are so elusive they mostly are hoping one passes straight through Earth from North to South Pole, and happens to register on one of these sensors.

This “telescope” will see almost nothing and may see nothing at all, ever.

I don’t think the article explains this very clearly.

[smokingfrog]

Never mind. I see they're using SQUID (Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices).

How could I not have known that?

[smokingfrog]

NEUTRINO TRAP is a tank filled with 100,000 gallons of a common cleaning fluid, tetrachloroethylene. It is located in a rock cavity 4,850 feet below the surface in the Homestake Mine in the town of Lead, S.D. The experiment is being run by Raymond Davis, Jr., Kenneth C. Hoffman and Don S. Harmer of Brookhaven National Laboratory. Suggested in 1964 by Davis and the author, the experiment was begun last year. The first results showed that the sun's output of neutrinos from the isotope boron 8 was less than expected.

[Jolla]

I guess that view is facing umm North?

[353FMG]

I’ve always been amazed that people on the South Pole do not fall off the Earth.

[PhilDragoo]

I found this site fascinating:

Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station

Decades of construction site weather issues pale in comparison to life and work in one of the most inhospitable sites.

Amazing accomplishment.

[bigbob]

Agreed. The depth and breatch of human scientific inquiry is just incredible.