World’s Largest Neutrino Observatory Completed

After over a decade of planning, construction, and testing, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory was completed on December 18, 2010. The $279 million dollar project involved constructing the observatory in ice on the Antarctic plateau at the National Science Foundation's Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.

In the deep darkness of the Antarctic ice, the observatory will record rare collisions of neutrinos, fundamental yet nearly-undetectable sub-atomic particles. Neutrinos can come from the sun, from cosmic rays interacting with the Earth's atmosphere, or through astronomical sources like exploding stars in the Milky Way. Their appeal to astrophysicists is that they hold no charge, so catching one on-the-move would allow it to be traced back to its point of origin.

The IceCube observatory is made-up of 5,160 optical sensors that are arranged in strings that have been lowered and frozen into 86 holes that reach as far as 8,000 feet in some spots. The holes were bored into the ice with a 4.8-megawatt hot water drill that was specially designed by The University of Wisconsin-Madison. The sensor strings are spread over a half-mile area on each side, which increases the chances a neutrino will hit a hydrogen or oxygen atom.

From this research, scientists hope to gain insight on things like dark matter and supersymmetric particles.

Sources: National Science Foundation, Popular Science