Today, the IceCube Collaboration announces a new search for neutrino emission from GRBs with a first-ever search that covers all flavors and the full sky. Five events were found to have a low-significance correlation with five GRBs. Consequently, the analysis places tight constraints on current models of neutrino and ultra-high-energy cosmic ray (UHECR) production in GRBs. These results have just been submitted to The Astrophysical Journal. […]
Now you see it, now you don’t. These images show the spot of the geographical South Pole, just before and after the old marker was removed. At the beginning of each year, a new marker is situated at the current location, which shifts constantly due to the movement of the ice sheet. […]
Every New Year’s Day, they have a celebration at the Pole in which they plant a newly designed marker for the location of the ever-shifting geographic pole. The spot is repositioned annually due to movement of the polar ice sheet at about 10 meters per year. […]
Last week saw the arrival of IceCube’s second winterover, Mack van Rossem, finally (an unusual glitch this year left IceCube with only one winterover until now). Mack got to jump right in, driving the scout for the regular December snow survey. He also arrived in time for traditional holiday events and festivities. […]
In 2013, the IceCube Collaboration published the world’s best limits on the spin-dependent cross section for weakly interacting dark matter particles. They were derived from the non-observation of annihilation into neutrinos of dark matter gravitationally trapped by the Sun.
Now, the collaboration presents a new likelihood formalism that allows easy integration of any neutrino telescope data into analyses of dark matter theories. […]
It was a rather busy week at the Pole. Besides people coming and going, there was the first IceCube webcast of the season, with a school from Wisconsin and two schools from Greece joining the event. An unexpected fire drill was also held last week. It turned out to be a timely drill, since the next day a genuine fire alarm sounded, triggered by a faulty oxygen sensor, not by an actual fire. […]
Decades ago, the aspiration to build a kilometer-scale neutrino detector at the South Pole seemed farfetched; today, we celebrate the 5-year anniversary of this incredible achievement. Shortly after 6 pm New Zealand time on December 18, 2010, the final sensor was lowered into the ice. This completed the decade-long construction effort that started with the design and fabrication of detector systems and concluded with the installation of the final string of sensors. […]
We’ve discussed sastrugi before, but this one deserves special attention for its shape. It sure does look like a frozen finger, doesn’t it? And it’s pointing the way to IceCube. […]
The number of IceCube personnel at the South Pole station during the past few summers is nothing like it used to be. Back in the days of detector construction, the number of staff on the ice would be in the double digits at this point. Instead, this week’s current count is six, including the recent arrival seen in the photo. […]
We weren’t kidding that there are a lot of training sessions for activities at the Pole. Last week saw some more training—fire fighters in search and rescue missions. Afterward, they all lined up for a group photo on the stairs outside the ICL. […]