IceCube Neutrino Lab Finished Just in Time for Christmas
For seven years, particle physicists have been waiting like children on Christmas Eve for Santa Claus. Now it’s Christmas morning in the tiny world of ghostly particles, known as neutrinos. These powerful yet mysterious pieces of matter travel through everything. They operate similar to light but travel through the universe, passing through the Earth without leaving a trace. They even pass through people and our cells without interruption and without causing damage.
What makes neutrinos so mysterious is also what makes them so difficult to study. Scientists discovered that they can use powerful sensors to detect the trail of neutrinos as they pass through objects because they create other particles in the process. And it is in studying the particles that neutrinos release as they fly through any matter that could help scientists unravel more of the mystery around the formation of galaxies and even the beginnings of the universe.
Neutrinos are so difficult to detect that solar radiation exposure at the Earth’s surface masks their signature. For that reason scientists have been setting hundreds of sensors — that resemble over-sized hamster exercise balls filled with circuit boards — deep into the Antarctic ice.
This video shows the final pieces of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory being lowered into the ice this week.
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