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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.

A "telescope" buried deep under Antarctic ice has detected the first signals that scientists hope will allow them to identify the source of mysterious particles that bombard Earth from outer space. For the past ten years scientists have been planning and building an ambitious experiment to explain the mystery of what produces the cosmic rays and elusive particles known as neutrinos, which constantly pepper our planet. more at Telegraph.co.UK

POSSIBLY the clearest skies on Earth have been found - but to exploit them, astronomers will have to set up a telescope in one of the planet's harshest climates...[Scientists] evaluated different factors that affect telescope vision, such as the amount of water vapour, wind speeds and atmospheric turbulence...The team found that the Antarctic plateau offers world-beating atmospheric conditions - as long as telescopes are raised 20 meters above its frozen surface...[The Antarctic air is] drier than the Atacama desert in Chile [where some of the best telescopes in the world are currently located].

Cosmologists Probe Mystery Of Dark Energy With South Pole Telescope ScienceDaily (Apr. 3, 2008) — Something is pulling the universe apart. What is it, and where will it take us from here? Scientists at the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, University of Chicago, seek answers to those questions with the newly-commissioned South Pole Telescope. Frigid and bone-dry, with six straight months of night each year, the South Pole is a forbidding place to live or work. But for largely the same reasons, it’s one of the best spots on the planet for surveying the faint cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation...

Newswise — Researchers at Northeastern University and the University of California, Irvine say that scientists might soon have evidence for extra dimensions and other exotic predictions of string theory. Early results from a neutrino detector at the South Pole, called AMANDA, show that ghostlike particles from space could serve as probes to a world beyond our familiar three dimensions, the research team says. No more than a dozen high-energy neutrinos have been detected so far. However, the current detection rate and energy range indicate that AMANDA's larger successor, called IceCube, now under construction, could provide the first evidence for string...

Antarctic telescope delivers first neutrino sky map UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON NEWS RELEASE Posted: July 30, 2003 A novel telescope that uses the Antarctic ice sheet as its window to the cosmos has produced the first map of the high-energy neutrino sky. The map, unveiled for astronomers at a meeting of the International Astronomical Union, provides astronomers with their first tantalizing glimpse of very high-energy neutrinos, ghostly particles that are believed to emanate from some of the most violent events in the universe -- crashing black holes, gamma ray bursts, and the violent cores of distant galaxies. The first map of...

Ron Cowen 3-22-2016 In tunnels deep inside a granite mountain at Daya Bay, a nuclear reactor facility some 55 kilometers from Hong Kong, sensitive detectors are hinting at the existence of a new form of neutrino, one of nature’s most ghostly and abundant elementary particles.Neutrinos, electrically neutral particles that sense only gravity and the weak nuclear force, interact so feebly with matter that 100 trillion zip unimpeded through your body every second. They come in three known types: electron, muon and tau. The Daya Bay results suggest the possibility that a fourth, even more ghostly type of neutrino exists —...