When complete, 4,200 of these digital optical sensors will be in place.
An international team of scientists and engineers has taken a major step toward completion of what will be the world’s preeminent cosmic neutrino observatory, harnessing a sophisticated hot-water drill to build an observatory under the South Pole that eventually will encompass a cubic kilometer of ice.
Scientists leading a consortium building the massive neutrino telescope known as IceCube say that this year they have nearly doubled the size of the detector now under construction at the National Science Foundation’s Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.
Although work can only take place from October through February-the fleeting and still frigid summer season at the Pole-the extent and pace of construction this year means that the observatory may soon begin scientific operations. IceCube is scheduled for completion in 2011.
When IceCube is completed, a cubic kilometer of the ice beneath the Pole will have been seeded with more than 4,200 optical sensors to capture telltale traces of the neutrinos and follow their tracks back to their distant points of origin. In addition, another 300 or so sensors will be deployed in tanks on the surface of the polar ice.
When fully operational, IceCube will sample neutrinos from the sky in the Northern Hemisphere. The detector will use the Earth as a filter to exclude other types of neutrinos, such as those from the sun, which could confuse the detector. Its primary scientific mission will be to identify the sources and distribution of the highest energy neutrinos created by violent cosmic events.
Rock on!
Careful John, the Republicans might find out about this important research and destroy it in a “cost cutting” just like the killed the supercollider in Texas.
It’s cool, but CERN is bigger:
http://www.exploratorium.edu/origins/cern/place/index.html
Maybe we should measure cubes, John. CERN’s existing accelerator is 27km circumference; but, I think it’s less than 10 meters diameter — tube size. IceCube is a cubic kilometer.
The volume of a 27 km circular cylinder that’s ~10 meters diameter would be a bit over 2 million cubic meters. Even the new CERN which will be 40 km circumference — say it’s 30 meters diameter[!] — would be a tad over 28 million cubic meters.
Volume of a cubic kilometer is 1,000,000,000 cubic meters.
That’s a good point about the volume. I thought of working that out, but couldn’t remember how to compute the volume of a torus.
John, it’s been over 40 years since I took descriptive geometry. Believe me. I had to look it up!
This detector is seriously cool, but you guys are comparing apples and oranges.
1) they aren’t digging up 1 billion cubic meters of ice. The detectors go around the cube of ice.
2) they’re essentially pissing in the snow, and dropping their detectors down the hole. If they release a picture of a neutrino, and it has a yellow tint, you’ll know why. Compare that to drilling through 28 million cubic meters of Alpine rock.
3) detecting neutrinos is a passive activity, waiting for them to collide with subatomic nuclei, and detecting the light flash. Using ice, instead of huge underground tanks of water, is quite innovative. But $272 million dollars for the whole project is probably the cost of electricity for the CERN particle accelerators in a couple months.
i’m sure you guys are just having fun, but it goes to show that many analogies can mislead more than they help. 🙁