News – Page 67

Searching for dark matter in the Earth

Posted on September 7, 2016 by Silvia Bravo

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The IceCube Collaboration has expanded dark matter studies with a search for annihilations in the center of the Earth. Researchers have used one year of data—May 2011 to May 2012—and have not found an excess of neutrinos above the expected background. The results have set new limits on the annihilation rate of WIMPs in the Earth that are an order of magnitude stronger than previous results by AMANDA and that also improve the IceCube spin-independent cross section limits for a WIMP mass of 50 GeV. This study has just been submitted to The European Physical Journal C. […]

Week 33 at the Pole

Posted on August 31, 2016 by Jean DeMerit

A full moon is doing just as good a job as the sun in lighting up the sky. Here the moon, surrounded by a clear halo, is shown hiding behind one of the frosty towers of the ICL. A large snow drift looms in the foreground. […]

Exploring the possibility of detecting extragalactic supernovae with IceCube-Gen2, summer research with IceCube

Posted on August 30, 2016 by Samantha Pedek, UW–River Falls

Growing up on a small, secluded hobby farm in southwestern Wisconsin, the night sky played a major role in my upbringing. Since there is almost no light pollution, the night sky was always bright and clear. In the summer months, my bedtime was determined by the time a specific satellite went over the house. Every year, my family would gather up all the blankets in the house and lay outside to watch meteor showers for hours. From a young age, I loved the idea of learning more about the stars and planets, and as I got into high school, I fell in love with physics. My original plan was to become a high school physics teacher, and I found the University of Wisconsin–River Falls (UWRF) not only has a fantastic physics program but is also involved with IceCube. I had heard about IceCube in 2013, when it won Physics World’s Breakthrough of the Year, and working for IceCube became my new goal and dream. […]

Week 32 at the Pole

Posted on August 26, 2016 by Jean DeMerit

The igloo—the prime attraction at the South Pole for the last few weeks—is no more. But before “disappearing,” its existence was memorialized in some final photos. Here you can see it with the names of its builders carved into the side, and it appears to almost glow from the soft white light from within. […]

Investigating excess of neutrinos from the galactic plane, summer research with IceCube

Posted on August 23, 2016 by Staff

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During my summer abroad, I worked with Dr. Jon Dumm, who is searching for an excess of neutrino events originating in the plane of the Milky Way. Dr. Dumm’s analysis is designed to look for a diffuse neutrino flux from the galactic plane in agreement with a map of where pion decay is expected to occur. However, this analysis is sensitive to a neutrino flux from point sources that are not necessarily distributed as the pion decay map predicts. We simulated four possible models of cosmic-ray source density in the galaxy as proxies for possible distributions of unresolved neutrino point sources. In doing so, we established limits on the total flux from various numbers of sources to which the primary pion-decay-based analysis is sensitive. […]

Supernova filters and building an IceCube model, summer research with IceCube

Posted on August 19, 2016 by Staff

At the start of the summer, UW-River Falls student Nick Jensen and I set out to create a 1:1000 scale model of the IceCube detector using LEDs to represent DOMs. To do this, we needed a wide assortment of parts to construct the model from the ground up. We spent the first half of the summer trying to gather all the parts needed for building. […]

Week 31 at the Pole

Posted on August 17, 2016 by Jean DeMerit

The igloo from last week is finally finished. What began as an afternoon project ended up taking an entire week (well, high winds were partly to blame). In the image, you can see the igloo lit from within, and perhaps even discern that there are only few blocks missing to complete the ceiling. […]

Week 30 at the Pole

Posted on August 10, 2016 by Jean DeMerit

That’s not the IceCube Lab all frosted up in this photo but the ARO (Atmospheric Research Observatory) building, with its LIDAR beams shown shooting straight up into the sky. […]

IceCube search for the ‘sterile neutrino’ draws a blank

Posted on August 8, 2016 by Staff

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In an effort to fill in the blanks of the Standard Model of particle physics, science has been conducting a diligent search for a hypothesized particle known as the “sterile neutrino.” Now, with the latest results from an icy particle detector at the South Pole, scientists are almost certain that there is no such particle. […]

Week 29 at the Pole

Posted on August 2, 2016 by Jean DeMerit

Station life was quiet at the South Pole last week, but not too quiet. They celebrated Christmas in July with a special dinner. Popular in many parts of the world, for various reasons, Christmas in July is only one of numerous celebrations held throughout the year at the Pole. […]