Open coat? No hat? It must be summer at the South Pole. Well, although it’s sunny outside it would probably be a stretch to call it warm, for those of us not used to it anyway. Dag Larsen, one of IceCube’s two winterovers for this season, has finally arrived (above), and he may or may not be used to the cold, but one thing is sure—he has plenty of time to get used to it. […]
In an analysis published today, the IceCube Collaboration reports on a search for a diffuse astrophysical neutrino signal, looking at high-energy upward-going muon tracks, with data taken between May 2009 and May 2010, when the detector was running in its 59-string configuration. The search found a high-energy neutrino excess of 1.8σ compared to the background scenario of a pure conventional atmospheric model, a measurement consistent with the astrophysical neutrino flux described in Science. The results of this research have been submitted to Physical Review D. […]
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is a demonstration of the power of the human passion for discovery, where scientific ingenuity meets technological innovation. Today, nearly 25 years after the pioneering idea of detecting neutrinos in ice, the IceCube Collaboration announces the observation of 28 very high-energy particle events that constitute the first solid evidence for astrophysical neutrinos from cosmic accelerators. Details of the research appear in an article published tomorrow, November 22, in Science. […]
Outgoing winterovers Felipe Pedreros (left) and Blaise Kuo Tiong (right) greet newcomer Ian Rees (center) on his arrival. Thanks to Felipe and Blaise for a great year of photos and reports, and welcome to Ian and Dag (Larsen, still to come), fresh and ready to capture the year’s adventure ahead. […]
It always seems as if they have just about everything at the South Pole, but apparently they didn’t have a unicycle. Until recently. Winter is officially over, and new arrivals to the station have come bearing goodies of all sorts, from “freshies” to toys—like this unicycle, which IceCube winterover Blaise is testing out in good form. […]
Life’s a tradeoff. At the South Pole, when winter comes to a close, you trade cold, dark, isolated for (still) cold, but bright, and less isolated. With the sun out, you also get sundogs—scientific name, parhelion. The tradeoff there? No more auroras for a while. […]
A few short weeks ago this scene would have looked quite different. But now the sun is out, full force, and the snow is bright white. The camera was apparently caught in a stare down with a Basler ski-plane that was stranded for a few days at the Pole due to bad weather. […]
The IceCube collaboration presents new results that rule out the possibility—at a confidence level greater than 90%—that the two PeV events detected in IceCube are cosmogenic neutrinos. However, the long exposure of the analyzed data, from May 2010 to May 2012, and the lack of detected events with higher energies, have allowed a new probe into the cosmogenic neutrino flux, which has been used to set the most stringent limit for the energy range from 1 PeV to 10 EeV. This analysis has just been submitted to the journal Physical Review D. […]
Greenery, and flowers, … this doesn’t look like much like the South Pole. But this photo was taken at an important place in the South Pole station—the greenhouse. If it weren’t for the greenhouse, they wouldn’t have any fresh vegetables during the long winter. […]
What do a rock, an egg, and a kiwi all have in common? They can all be found at the South Pole. Maybe not readily or easily, but they were all found at the South Pole recently. This rock was discovered outside on a snowdrift, a finding that spurred some scientific tests to examine the nature of the rock. […]