Posted on 12/23/2010 12:42:44 PM PST by NormsRevenge
WELLINGTON (AFP) – An extraordinary underground observatory for subatomic particles has been completed in a huge cube of ice one kilometre on each side deep under the South Pole, researchers said.
Building the IceCube, the world's largest neutrino observatory, has taken a gruelling decade of work in the Antarctic tundra and will help scientists study space particles in the search for dark matter, invisible material that makes up most of the Universe's mass.
The observatory, located 1,400 metres underground near the US Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, cost more than 270 million dollars, according to the US National Science Foundation (NSF).
The cube is a network of 5,160 optical sensors, each about the size of a basketball, which have been suspended on cables in 86 holes bored into the ice with a specially-designed hot-water drill.
NSF said the final sensor was installed in the cube, which is one kilometre (0.62 miles) long in each direction, on December 18. Once in place they will be forever embedded in the permafrost as the drill holes fill with ice.
The point of the exercise is to study neutrinos, subatomic particles that travel at close to the speed of light but are so small they can pass through solid matter without colliding with any molecules.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
A handout picture taken on December 18 released by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) shows the final Digital Optical Module (DOM) which was to be deployed in the IceCube array, the world's largest neutrino observatory, built under the Antarctic tundra near the US Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. (AFP/Robert Schwarz)
Future historians, assuming there are any, will refer to these as "The Crazy Years".
But, but....that is what the Large Hadron Collider was supposed to do.
Everett Dirksen would have gone ‘Postal’.. or not. ;-)
NormsRevenge
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Let's find out.
Is it waste water from a neutrino reactor?
these are little fellars,, tough to catch,, like illegals.
ya need really sensitive detectors and then what do ya do when ya do catch ‘em. ;-)
they got all kinds of experiments trying to figure out what the heck is happening subatomically.. is the universe and beyond a stringy thing or what?
This is detecting neutrinos, not mashing various together at extreme speeds. Previous detectors have usually been in pools in abandoned mines, rather small experiments that rarely detect neutrinos. The reason is that you need enough mass above to block all the other particles so that only neutrinos (of which almost all pass right through the whole Earth) can get through. But you also need enough detectors spread far enough through enough consistent matter so that they can detect a neutrino collision with the surrounding matter. This thing is expected to detect a neutrino every 20 minutes, which is astounding compared to previous detectors.
But in the end if we're going to do it at all, this is far cheaper than it would have cost to do it anywhere else on the planet. There are no problems with heat and water tables or unknown densities and hardness. All they had to do was (very simplified) shoot hot water down into the ice, pump it and the melted ice out, drop in the strings, pour water back in, and let it freeze back up.
And folks said I was crazy when I thought
someone was watching me!
I’m not sure I buy this “Dark Matter” thing. I’m thinking that there’s something really basic about gravity that we don’t understand.
I recall first time I read of such a setup, the scientists started getting alarms of hundreds of these little critters detected all at once. Naturally they began pouring thru the logs and systems to find out what broke, when they got a call about a star that had gone SuperNova. That was the first I’d ever heard of Neutrinos.
Quasars, gamma ray bursts, quarks .. black holes.. cool stuff, putting it in ice makes sense I guess. :-)
Sad story, this whole thing.
We are all given to understand that this ice will all be melted in just the next few years.
We tend to forget how early we are in scientific understanding. It was only about a hundred years ago that we found out atoms were made out of other particles.
Exactly. And perhaps a little Rum or Schnapps...
For God's sake....WHY?
A sensor descends down a hole in the ice as part of the final season of IceCube. (Photo: NSF/B. Gudbjartsson)
The IceCube team poses in front of the deployment tower following completion of the IceCube Neutrino Detector. (Photo NSF/C.Carpenter)
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