ICECUBE
NEUTRINO OBSERVATORY – SCI & TECH
News:
What is it? IceCube: The
big, chill neutrino-spotter
What's
in the news?
●
Now, for the first time, researchers have
announced the discovery of twelve astrophysical tau neutrinos, originating from
distant sources.
●
The detection was made using the IceCube
Observatory in Antarctica.
Ice
Cube Neutrino Observatory:
●
It is a device at the earth’s South Pole that detects subatomic particles called neutrinos.
●
It was built and is maintained by the IceCube Collaboration, which consists
of many universities worldwide led by the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
●
It consists of thousands of sensors buried more than 1.4 km beneath
the ice plus multiple detectors above the surface.
●
IceCube is the world’s biggest ‘neutrino telescope’ and its sensors are
distributed throughout a cubic kilometre of ice.
Mechanism:
●
When a neutrino interacts with the ice
surrounding the sensors, it may produce some charged particles and some
radiation.
●
The sensors detect the radiation to infer
the detection of a neutrino and use the radiation’s properties to understand
more about the particle.
●
Neutrinos come in different types. IceCube
can identify some of them in real-time.
●
For others, IceCube collects data for many
years and scientists then comb through them to find neutrino interaction
events.
Neutrinos:
●
Neutrinos are mysterious particles, produced copiously in nuclear reactions in
the Sun, stars, and elsewhere.
●
They also "oscillate" - meaning that different types of neutrinos
change into one another.
●
A neutrino is a fermion that interacts
only via weak interaction and gravity.