It’s the middle of winter at the South Pole, and not only is it dark outside, but there are restrictions in place to keep it as dark as possible (exterior lights limited to a red spectrum, to reduce interference) for the benefit of research projects that rely on the dark night sky. […]
Last week, they were observing midwinter at the South Pole station, which traditionally includes a fancy dinner and a viewing of “The Shining.” […]
A completed jigsaw puzzle serves as a base for holding a sizeable LEGO creation. This model looks to be of London’s Tower Bridge, but perhaps someone should talk to the LEGO folks about designing one for the ICL (the IceCube Lab). Wouldn’t that be fun? […]
Last week at the Pole the entire winterover crew got together to take a group photo. They normally do this each year, but not always with such spectacular results. This year they chose an outdoor venue with an aurora backdrop. […]
Station life was quiet last week. Outside, the auroras kept themselves a bit quiet, too. Instead, folks were treated to a nice moon halo on display. […]
On Sunday, June 5, IceCube will be part of the “take over” of Washington Square Park for Street Science, a free World Science Festival event. Dozens of research groups are offering hands-on activities, demonstrations, and exhibits to engage curious visitors of all ages. […]
The IceCube Collaboration presents a new search for dark matter annihilation from the galactic center and halo using cascade events, i.e., particle showers created by the interaction of electron and tau neutrinos and Z-boson mediated muon neutrinos. Scientists searched for interactions starting in the DeepCore subarray between May 2011 and May 2012 and found no neutrino excess with respect to the background-only hypothesis, which allowed them to derive upper limits on dark matter candidates with masses between 30 GeV and 10 TeV. These results have been submitted today to the European Physical Journal C. […]
Space: the final frontier. These are the images of IceCube winterover Mack van Rossem. Well, he’s not in space, and he may not exactly be “boldly going where no man has gone before,” but he is spending a year in one of the most remote locations on Earth—the South Pole. […]
“On behalf of the operations group, I’m happy to report that as of run 127950 on 2016-05-20, 20:38:47 UTC, we have started the IC86-2016 physics run.” With these words, every IceCuber learned that we were entering a new year of data for IceCube. […]
Not a particularly busy or hectic week at the Pole—quiet punctuated by work, or work punctuated by quiet, depending on how you look at things. Now, depending on where, not how, you’re looking, you get to see where the action is this time of year at the South Pole. […]