The Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center (WIPAC), a research center that is part of UW–Madison’s Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education and headquarters for the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, is back for the 3rd year in a row at the Holiday Fantasy in Lights event in Madison, Wisconsin! WIPAC participated in the annual holiday […]
The time has come for last year’s winterovers to pass the baton to the new crew that arrived at the South Pole last week. As a winterover, individuals brave the unforgiving environment to spend a year—sometimes longer—at the South Pole, half of which is enveloped in complete darkness. Every year, two winterovers are selected and […]
It was another quiet week at the Pole. Well, quiet as far as the IceCube detector and the IceCube winterovers’ workload was concerned. But not so quiet regarding flight activity. The first plane, a Basler aircraft, to bring in crew for the summer season arrived at the South Pole last week. Fourteen new arrivals disembarked […]
For the first time, an international team of scientists have found evidence of high-energy neutrino emission from NGC 1068, also known as Messier 77, an active galaxy in the constellation Cetus and one of the most familiar and well-studied galaxies to date. First spotted in 1780, this galaxy, located 47 million light-years away from us, […]
Sometimes it’s just plain quiet at the Pole. It’s summer, the sun’s out, and the temperatures are…well, let’s just say it’s cold. Above is a nice view of the South Pole station on a sunny day. And below is IceCube winterover Celas, whose remaining days at the Pole are numbered, taking advantage of the sun […]
Back in 2013, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory—a cubic-kilometer neutrino detector embedded in Antarctic ice—announced the first observation of high-energy (above 100 TeV) neutrinos originating from outside our solar system, spawning a new age in astronomy. Four years later, on September 22, 2017, a high-energy neutrino event was detected coincident with a gamma-ray flare from a […]
Join us to hear exciting IceCube results! Thursday, November 3, 1:00 – 2:00 pm U.S. CDT […]
Neutrinos are ghostly, nearly massless particles that can travel extraordinarily large distances unimpeded. Because of this, neutrinos act as “messengers,” harboring information about their sources. Although most detected neutrinos originate from the sun or Earth’s atmosphere, there exist highly energetic astrophysical neutrinos that originate from the farthest reaches of outer space. In 2013, the first […]
Every second, 100 trillion neutrinos pass through the human body. These tiny, almost massless particles travel tremendous distances through space while carrying information about their sources and are created by some of the most energetic phenomena in the universe. But neutrinos are incredibly difficult to detect, requiring a one-of-a-kind detector that can “see” these nearly […]
So, you’ve arrived at the Geographic South Pole—or have you? The sign might not help much on its own, but now that the sun is out we can see where we are from the surroundings (yes, it’s the geographic South Pole). Below is a close-up view of the current 2022 South Pole marker, which was […]