The Astronomist: IceCube

IceCube

By The Astronomist on Tuesday, January 19, 2010

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is currently under construction in Antarctica. It is a pretty nifty project and this animated video by Casey O'hara is well worth watching for an explanation of the IceCube concept. It is light on the science, but it is delight because it explains neutrinos with Legos, breakfast cereal, and otter pops! I will have to post about IceCube again when they catch a neutrino.

3 comments:

Laurel BacqueJanuary 21, 2010 at 2:04 PM
We're not catching neutrinos...just detecting their tiny presence
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The AstronomistJanuary 21, 2010 at 5:51 PM
Certainly... I put that little phrase in italics to emphasize exactly that. Neutrinos are the strangest things to me, see my post: this is just to say. More scientifically, I was considering how do you learn about or weigh such a particle. Projects like IceCube are necessary. Also, the prospects for seeing double beta decay and actually obtaining constraints on neutrino masses (as opposed to the vague WMAP constraint on the total sum of neutrino species < 1.3 eV) are very exciting.
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The AstronomistJanuary 21, 2010 at 10:38 PM
I realize the link above I posted to Physics Today is only available to subscribers. Sorry, here is a permanent link to the abstract for the article: Multiple detectors to watch for double beta decay.
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