Among all the healthy activities at the Pole lately is the “Climb to Mt. Everest” challenge, performed by climbing the stairs of the “beer can” (the vertical tower at the end of the station that connects the levels). The tower has 94 steps, and winterovers Josh and Martin are doing five beer cans a day, […]
The first auroras of the season are in! This is always such an exciting time, not only for those folks lucky enough to be at the Pole but also for those of us who only get the long-distance armchair experience. In IceCube winterover Martin’s selfie below, it almost looks as though he is somehow creating […]
So, how many South Poles are there? Above we see a beautiful sunset image taken last week at the Pole. This location is the ceremonial South Pole, easy to identify by the lineup of flags representing the original signatories of the Antarctic Treaty. It’s a place for photo ops, but it’s not what’s generally referred […]
Our sun shines not only in light but also in neutrinos. These tiny, chargeless, and nearly massless particles are produced deep in the sun’s core, but we also expect them to be created in the solar atmosphere, either by collisions of cosmic rays or during solar flares. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole, a […]
Let the twilight begin! Even though twilight occurs only twice a year at the South Pole, it is a drawn out process that lasts weeks instead of hours. At sunset, the light outside slowly dwindles before leaving the Pole in complete darkness. Even then, it’s not always fully dark since, while the sun may be […]
It was all about the sun last week at the Pole. Weather conditions allowed the winterovers to glimpse the green flash as the sun finally set below the horizon. IceCube winterover Martin was in the right place at the right time to capture a photograph of it, above (and it wasn’t his first time). The […]
Since 2013, the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center (WIPAC) has hosted afterschool internships at least once a year to provide high school students in the Madison area the opportunity to work on real-world physics experiments. Through the internship, participating students have been able to meet working astrophysicists, learn computer-programming skills, and contribute to data analysis […]
Darren Grant has seen quite a few exciting things during his time as IceCube spokesperson. From pinpointing a cosmic accelerator to measuring a tau neutrino appearance to detecting a Glashow resonance event, the last four years have been exciting for the South Pole neutrino telescope and the team of scientists behind it. But Grant, a […]
When the IceCube Neutrino Observatory sees a high-energy neutrino from outer space, IceCube researchers want to know where it came from. The unconventional “telescope” uses a three-dimensional grid of supersensitive light sensors buried under the ice at the South Pole to detect signals from these tiny, nearly massless fundamental particles, which rarely interact and can […]
IceCube was stable last week, but the same can’t be said for the weather at the Pole. They had high winds and mostly conditions of low visibility from blowing snow. But there were a few brief moments where things cleared, and the sun was visible on the horizon. The low sun highlights the texture of […]