A massive drill that will create holes over a mile and a half deep in the Antarctic ice for a sub-atomic telescope is in the final testing stages at the University of Wiscosin Physical Sciences Laboratory.
The drill will begin its long journey from Stoughton in late October, traveling by truck, boat, and military cargo jet to its final destination at the South Pole.
“What we have is a hot water drill system, and it will drill a hole in the ice 2.5 kilometers deep,” said Mark Mulligan, chief engineer on the project. “It allows us to drill much faster and efficiently into the ice than its precursor.”
The drilling system actually consists of a large reel — complete with a mile and a half of hose — mounted on skis, a tower, two 10,000-gallon water tanks, and a series of small operations houses for the 15-member crew.
It is part of a UW-led international project called the IceCube Project which seeks to build a unique telescope to search the inner layers of the earth for mysterious sub-atomic particles called neutrinos. The drilling system, which will run in 12-week increments, 24 hours, seven days a week once it is in place, will help create that telescope.
“[We will] melt the ice and end up with a column of water in the hole,” Mulligan explained. “The instrument — a cable with optical modules on it — gets deployed in it, and then the water freezes, and it’s frozen into place. We’ll drill an array of 80 of these holes, and now you have neutrino detectors at the South Pole.”
Neutrinos are particles similar to electrons, but have no charge. Their existence is thought to be a possible final piece to the Big Bang Theory, which holds that the universe was created by a large explosion of matter.
The problem thus far with that theory has been that scientists have only been able to account for a small fraction of this matter. Neutrinos, which have just a tiny amount of mass, may be so prevalent that they may eventually account for all or part of the missing mass and provide further support for the Big Bang Theory.
The project is one of two international projects aimed at studying the neutrino. European scientists will conduct the other in the Mediterranean Sea, which, according to Mulligan, will not be as scientifically effective as deploying in the pure Antarctic ice.
The IceCube Project is the second stage of an experiment that started with the AMANDA project, a similar but less technologically advanced precursor, led by another UW scientist, Francis Halzen.
The IceCube Project is funded by a $295 million grant from the National Science Foundation, and the $5.5 million drilling system is the first step in the expansion of that long-term experiment.
“Once we get down there, it will take five to six years,” Mulligan said. “We can drill 16 holes a season, although less in the first year, which we will have to make up in the back end, and there [are] 80 holes.”
So far the project has experienced setbacks that have limited the initial shipments of the drilling system, but engineers said that even with the extremely tight deadlines, delays should not hamper the project’s first drilling in January 2005.
The initial components — including the reel and tower — are to be trucked to Los Angeles, shipped or flown to New Zealand, flown to the McMurdo Station on the Antarctic coast, and then flown again to Amundsen-Scott Station at the South Pole late next month.
“It’s a long logistics train,” Mulligan said. “It takes a while, but the equipment was designed with that in mind.”
