Summer is indeed winding down at the Pole. Last week saw the departure of the two remaining IceCube summer personnel, leaving IceCube’s two intrepid winterovers on their own until next November. The week was full of activity, though, mostly focused on tasks related to the ARA project, like troubleshooting communications (which required digging out and […]
As far as sun dogs go, these are hard to beat. Maybe IceCube winterover Hrvoje has a way of attracting sundogs? He took the photo above, and last month, he posed in front of sun dogs for winterover Marc to capture the shot. Since it’s summer at the Pole, people were still coming and going […]
White dwarfs are very dense, compact objects that are one of the possibilities for the final evolutionary state of stars. If they happen to be in a binary system with another companion star, the white dwarf may pull material from the companion star onto its surface. In this case, if enough material is accumulated, a […]
The IceCube Collaboration, in conjunction with Kaggle, the Technical University of Munich (TUM), Munich Data Science Institute (MDSI), the Collaborative Research Center SFB 1258, Excellence Cluster ORIGINS, and PUNCH4NFDI, announces the launch of the IceCube – Neutrinos in Deep Ice project. This outreach project invites everyone to present a machine learning solution that tackles the […]
Last week’s main activity at the Pole involved digging, lots of digging (see below). Two ARA stations needed to be dug out for maintenance and repair tasks. One of the stations had over two meters of snow to remove from it, so it was a bit challenging—but many hands make light (or lighter) work. The […]
The LSST Corporation (LSSTC) and the IceCube Collaboration (IceCube) are pleased to announce a pilot childcare support program generously funded by the Heising-Simons Foundation. This partnership program, a landmark in multimessenger astronomy, will provide childcare funding for four conferences over the next 12 months—two LSSTC-sponsored conferences and two IceCube-sponsored conferences. The program is designed to […]
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a cubic-kilometer-sized neutrino telescope, searches for high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin. Located at the geographic South Pole, IceCube consists of 5,160 digital optical modules (DOMs) across 86 vertical cables (strings) embedded deep within the Antarctic ice, as well as a surface array, IceTop, and a denser inner subdetector, DeepCore. When neutrinos […]
At the South Pole, they have their traditions…and their training. Last week, training included station-wide emergency response drills. And training can involve some fun. Lobbing balls around in the gym (or doing anything), though, in full firefighting gear is strenuous and thus good practice. PolarTREC educator Elaine Krebs arrived at the Pole as part of […]
The IceCube Collaboration has reported two candidate events for the final unobserved Standard Model cosmic messenger: astrophysical tau neutrinos. And one of these neutrino events, as with previous prominent particles detected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, has been given its own nickname. Double Double, an event with a high probability of being produced by a […]
Week 52—the last of 2022—was a busy week at the South Pole. Some of IceCube’s summer staff were leaving by the end of the week, so there were some minor items to finish up before then. Also, the second South Pole overland traverse (SPoT2) arrived, with more fuel for the station and some IceCube Upgrade […]