#Ice cube neutrino observatory upgrade#
#Ice cube neutrino observatory full#

IceCube is comprised of 5,160 digital optical modules suspended along 86 strings embedded in a cubic kilometer of ice beneath the South Pole.

It was named the top breakthrough in physics by the British magazine Physics World. Last month, the IceCube Collaboration announced in the journal Science that the observatory recorded 28 very high-energy particle events that constitute the first solid evidence for astrophysical neutrinos from cosmic accelerators. The project is a multinational collaboration studying neutrinos, nearly massless sub-atomic particles that result from the most violent astrophysical events in the universe, such as exploding stars, gamma ray bursts, and cataclysmic phenomena involving black holes and neutron stars. Photo Credit: Paul Sullivan/Antarctic Photo LibraryĪn LC-130 takes off from the South Pole Station, with the IceCube Lab in the background.Ībout 20 “IceCubers” will fly to the Pole this year from various locations across the United States, as well as from Canada, Germany, Sweden and Belgium. Antarctic Program (USAP), which is managed by the National Science Foundation (NSF). But getting as much data as possible from this huge telescope buried in the Antarctic ice still depends on how much can be done at the South Pole during a few months with daylight and reasonable temperatures.Īn LC-130 Hercules, equipped with skis, can only land and depart safely from the Pole during the brief austral summer from the beginning of November to mid-February, when everyone and almost everything arrives at the bottom of the world by these workhorses of the U.S.

#Ice cube neutrino observatory full#

While there are no more strings deployed, the detector is performing impressively at full speed. Photo Credit: Peter Rejcek/Antarctic Photo Library

#Ice cube neutrino observatory upgrade#

Now the detector is undergoing its biggest upgrade to date following what many consider the biggest discovery in physics this year of neutrinos originating from outside the solar system. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory has been running at full speed since construction was completed in December 2010. While it did not record any prompt burst of gamma rays from this blazar nor observed it to be in a flaring state, this non-detection provided important information to help constrain the properties of the source.Austral summers are not as exciting now as they once were when the IceCube Neutrino Observatory was under construction at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, involving a huge hot-water drill and the deployment of thousands of digital optical modules deep into the ice sheet. On this occasion, IceCube detected a neutrino while at the same time gamma rays were detected by other telescopes on Earth and in space the observations revealed that both ‘cosmic messenger’ have their origin in a blazar, a type of active galaxy with one of its jets pointing toward Earth.ĮSA's INTEGRAL gamma-ray observatory was part of the international collaboration that observed this source. In this artistic rendering, an image of the sensors based on measurements of the neutrino event IceCube-170922A, recorded on 22 September 2017, is shown underneath the laboratory. The only visible equipment above the surface is the IceCube Lab, which hosts the computers that collect data from the over 5,000 light sensors in the ice. A view of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, which is buried at depths between 1.5 and 2.5 kilometers below the Antarctic ice, at the South Pole.