IceCube Neutrino Observatory

About IceCube 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’; its sensors are distributed throughout a cubic kilometre of ice.
• Working
  • 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.

Q1) What are 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.

Source: Astronomers detect seven potential ‘ghost particles’ that passed through planet