The IceCube Neutrino Observatory

Well, here's a bit of a first for AWAT, because this is a story about a telescope. But it's not your average telescope, being composed of a huge chunk of Antarctic ice with a very large cosmic ray muon filter attached to the back of it, which is called the Earth.

Commenced in 2005, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory is now approaching completion with recent installation of a key component DeepCore. With DeepCore, the Antarctic observatory is now able to observe the southern sky, as well as the northern sky.

Neutrinos have no charge and are weakly interactive with other kinds of matter, making them difficult to detect. The method employed by IceCube and by many other neutrino detectors is to look for Cherenkov radiation which, in the context of IceCube, is emitted when a neutrino interacts with an ice atom creating a highly energized charged particle, such as an electron or a muon – which shoots off at a speed greater than the speed of light, at least greater than the speed of light in ice.

The advantage of using Antarctic ice as a neutrino detector is that it is available in large volumes and thousands of years of sedimentary compression has squeezed most impurities out of it, making it a very dense, consistent and transparent medium.…

See Universe Today for links to further info.