This article was taken from the April 2011 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
At 2,452m below the Antarctic ice, a string of optical sensors is fishing for neutrinos. The string (pictured) is one of 86, each with 60 such sensors, that comprise the South Pole's IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the Amundsen-Scott Station.
IceCube's job is to hunt for neutrinos -- sub-atomic particles created by decaying radioactive elements inside stars, and by astronomical explosions such as supernovae. "Neutrinos are the ideal cosmic messengers," explains Francis Halzen, IceCube's principal investigator. "Unlike charged cosmic rays, they travel without deflection and, being weakly interacting, reach us from Hubble distance. The flip side of their interaction with matter is that it takes a very large detector to observe them."
Which is where the IceCube's 1km3 of Antarctic ice comes in.
When a neutrino does collide with a water molecule, the nuclear reaction creates a particle called a muon that radiates a blue light, and this is detected by the IceCube's sensors. Now all they have to do is wait...
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
