The Physics Department of UW–River Falls hosts summer internships for young college students that allow them to engage in IceCube and other polar science projects. Over the 10-week internship, they become a member of the team, where they learn to program and to tackle challenging scientific questions. And, as you will read here, they also get a chance to share their experience. […]
Today the IceCube Collaboration has presented a search for tau neutrinos at energies above 214 TeV that, although it did not find any events, allowed setting upper limits on the astrophysical tau neutrino flux. This search sets limits on tau neutrinos at energies three orders of magnitude lower than the energies reached by previous dedicated tau neutrino searches. And more importantly, the results now submitted to Physical Review D also prove that tau neutrino searches in IceCube are reaching the sensitivity for a potential discovery. […]
The landscape at the South Pole continues to brighten, making it perhaps harder to ignore the extent of snow accumulation at the IceCube Lab. But snow removal wasn’t on the table last week, which was a quiet one all around for the IceCube winterovers. […]
In a paper submitted today to the Astrophysical Journal, the IceCube Collaboration presents results of a search for astrophysical sources of transient neutrino emission using a sample of low-energy—30 to 300 GeV—muon neutrino events from DeepCore. Although no source is singled out, the study sets limits on soft-spectra models, such as energetic or nearby choked GRBs. […]
Although the sunrise is still not officially here, the South Pole is enjoying a period of twilight. The horizon is clearly visible in the direction of the sun and is showing some characteristic orange color. The photo shows this nicely, with the added effect that reflection in the station windows gives the appearance of a clear view through the windows of the continuous horizon. […]
The “IRES: U.S.-European International Research Experience-Particle Astrophysics for Undergraduates” program, funded by NSF and led by the University of Wisconsin–River Falls, brought us to Johannes Gutenburg University in Mainz, Germany, this summer to work with Professor Lutz Köpke and Professor Sebastian Böser. […]
Francis Halzen, IceCube principal investigator and Hilldale and Gregory Breit Distinguished Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, was announced yesterday as one of the prestigious international 2015 Balzan prizewinners. […]
The South Pole station’s windows were exposed last week, after being covered up (decoratively, we might add) for over four months now. Outside, it still looks more like night than day, but things will gradually brighten up, and then the windows might need to be covered for a different reason—to promote a better sleeping environment. […]
International Research Experiences for Students (IRES) is a program funded by the National Science Foundation to support active participation of US undergraduates in international research projects. Laura Lusardi from New Richmond, WI, and Kelsey Kolell from Fond du Lac, WI, participated in the IRES program through UW–River Falls to work on IceCube research for the summer.
We are both third-year undergraduate students, studying physics at the University of Wisconsin–River Falls. This summer, we had the wonderful opportunity to travel to Germany through IRES to work with IceCube researchers. Even though we both ended up attending the same university, we took wildly different paths to get here. […]
The sun is not yet up, but the sky is definitely brightening in its direction. The image below, however, shows that it’s still early twilight and generally quite dark at the Pole. This photo was taken at the same location and time as the one above, just in the opposite direction—quite the contrast. […]