Buried a mile underneath the ice of Antarctica, the University of Wisconsin’s south pole particle detector, IceCube Neutrino Observatory, has discovered unprecedented amounts of energy beneath the surface and recently has attracted some national media attention in the science community.
Francis Halzen, principal investigator of the project, said IceCube is a “big detector” that identifies neutrinos.
“Think of IceCube as a big eye whose main mission is to take a picture of the sky, but instead of seeing light it sees neutrinos,” Halzen said.
Halzen said neutrinos are essentially subatomic particles in the cosmos that, unlike light, have the capability to travel through walls. Neutrinos have no mass, he said.
Halzen said the IceCube project emerged about 25 years ago with the idea to put a particle detector in a block of ice one mile deep in Antarctica. Workers on the IceCube project finished building the particle detector in 2010, Halzen said.
“What we have now are the results of three years of data,” Halzen said.
Halzen said IceCube researchers working with the particle detractor have discovered an enormous amount of energy ever before seen in a photo. He added 28 neutrinos from the cosmos were discovered, the equivalent of making a picture in the sky with 28 pixels.
The future goal with the project is to discover more neutrinos and try to map the universe, Halzen said.
“Getting more pixels in our sky map is the first priority,” Halzen said.
Halzen said only about one-third of IceCube is focused on this task, however, since IceCube is also focused on other projects such as detecting dark matter. He added that neutrinos are the main mission since they have more than a thousand times the energy than any accelerator.
Halzen said he did not know if this discovery was important, but he hoped so because nothing with this amount of energy has been photographed.
UW is the leading institution on this project, which is “a very big deal,” Halzen said. UW is the first to build a particle detector and no one else in the world has done so yet, he said.
“They’re trying to build something like IceCube in the Mediterranean Sea, but it’s still in the planning stages,” Halzen said.
Halzen said the National Science Foundation, whose mission is to support fundamental research in science and engineering, is the main source of funding for IceCube. He added there are some additional funders within foreign collaborations, but NSF has the “largest piece of the pie.”
NSF spokesperson Peter West said NSF is responsible for coordinating all science projects in Antarctica and providing funding to any Antarctic program that “has merit in science.” NSF invested “a great deal of money” into IceCube research, he said.
“Clearly, we are quite pleased with their discoveries,” West said.
West said NSF is responsible for the logistics of the IceCube project, such as getting it built a mile under the ice and maintaining it.
“The discovery of neutrinos is important because it tells us more about the nature of the universe,” West said.
