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Ice Cube Neutrino Observatory At South Pole
Scryer writes "Construction of the Ice Cube Neutrino Observatory was completed on 18 Dec at the South Pole. It's now the world's largest neutrino detector, with 5,160 optical sensors on 86 strings embedded two kilometers below the National Science Foundation's Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. It has been gathering data since construction started, and will be fully operational after the last strings freeze in March 2011."
First he was just an MC/Rapper...
Then and Actor,
Now? He's a scientific observatory!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
...deep in the ice. Phenomenal.
That would be home made Kombucha, which can be served 'on the rocks' for that sub-arctic effect.
Want to spend a winter in Antarctica as the BOFH for a scientific supercomputer watching for neutrinos in a 2-km^3 ice cube?
Recruitment for the 2011-2012 season will begin in early 2011
The actual story is here
http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-icecube-world-largest-neutrino-observatory.html
The key bits is this (should have been in the summary):
Under construction since 2004, IceCube encloses a cubic kilometer of clear ice, beginning one and a half kilometers beneath the surface and extending downward another kilometer. The telescope has to be this big because neutrino collisions with matter are exceedingly rare: out of uncounted trillions of neutrinos constantly passing through the ice, IceCube will observe just a few hundred a day.
Seeing them at all is only possible because when neutrinos collide with the nuclei of oxygen atoms in the ice, they turn into energetic charged particles called muons, moving in the same direction. Because these muons (and other debris from the collision) are moving faster than light can travel through ice, they radiate a shock wave of blue Cherenkov radiation visible to IceCube’s photodetectors.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
There was a time when project names were chosen to be cute acronyms. I work with digital signal processing where there are algorithms named MUSIC, for "MUltiple SIgnal Classification", and ESPRIT, for "Estimation of Signal Parameters via Rotational Invariance Techniques".
Today it's better to have Google-friendly names, i.e. names that are unique. Every time when I start a new project name now I first google the name, if it gets any results I change the name. This is priceless for little-known projects, because any extra words you have to add to a search limit the results you get.
In the two examples I cited above, adding the word "algorithm" will return what you want, but how many pages are there in the web that mention MUSIC and ESPRIT without the word "algorithm"? Those pages are lost in the Google noise.
Someone submit this NSF project to YouCut!
in Antarctica.
Yours In Pahrump, Nevada,
Kilgore T.
one basement's the same as another
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
That's certainly a new turn on a familiar development phrase.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
How is the official home page of the observatory, which includes that story and more in the "News" column right smack-dab in the middle of the home page the "wrong link"?
Sure, maybe the summary could have included more information, or a link to a summarizing news story, but linking to the observatory's official presence on the internet is hardly the "wrong link".
(obligatory)
I think we're talking about an organism... that could imitate other life forms... perfectly... It could have gone on and on... It could have become one dog... It could have become as many dogs as it wanted to -- and without losing any of its original mass...
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Donald Knuth
They may say they've finished construction of a neutrino observatory, but what they've actually done is gotten the Ancient outpost fully operational. Earth is now completely safe from any potential alien attack.
F*** the Pole-Ice comin' straight from the underground
Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony.. . Now Nobel?
DAAAMN SON!!!
What the hell are they thinking spending 6 years building an ice cube station at the South Pole?! There's ice everywhere already! Cripes, you'd need a water heater just to get the water to the ice machine! It's not like there's much of a customer base down there either...
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
Those neutrinos are totally rad dudes!!!
Oh, I'm afraid the Observatory will be quite operational when your neutrino friends arrive
Please do submit again. A thick skin is sometimes needed at first, but you'll get the customs down soon enough, and a high-quality submission like yours is always appreciated.
...that December 18th was, indeed, a good day.
"The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as long as we live." - M.J. A
If anyone's interested in, you know, the science and all that, plus the extraordinary work they've done reverse-mining fragile and expensive glass spheres in extremely cold conditions, you could do worse than check out Anil Ananthaswamy's The Edge Of Physics. There's lots of other cool stuff too, my review here.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
Much better than the usual snarky blog referencing an error-filled news article.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Neutrinos better check themselves before they wreck themselves!
will be fully operational after the last strings freeze in March 2011
Translation efforts are under way. It is expected that a Chinese version of the project will be available soon after President Hu visits the facility in late 2011.
Ask me about repetitive DNA