As cosmic rays collide with particles in the Earth’s atmosphere, air showers containing atmospheric muons and neutrinos are produced. The atmospheric neutrinos are then detected by DeepCore, a denser and smaller array of sensors in the center of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole. Compared to the main IceCube detector, DeepCore is sensitive […]
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory, embedded in a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice, searches for weakly interacting particles called neutrinos that are able to travel undisturbed through the cosmos. Of interest are high-energy astrophysical neutrinos that can arise from cosmic ray interactions with matter or photons in astrophysical sources. Thus far, the dominant sources of the […]
When high-energy particles called cosmic rays collide with Earth’s atmosphere, they create cascades of particles or air showers that emit faint radio signals. Because they are so faint, they are often drowned out by background signals from natural sources (the universe) and man-made sources (radio transmitters), making it difficult to discern signals originating from a […]
Neutrinos are weakly interacting particles that are able to travel unhindered through the cosmos. When a neutrino interacts with a molecule in the ice, blue light is emitted from the resulting secondary charged particles through a process called Cherenkov radiation. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole consists of an array of 5,160 optical […]
At the South Pole, there exists the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a gigaton-scale detector that detects tiny, nearly massless particles called neutrinos. Neutrinos can travel unhindered through space and, thus, can help uncover otherwise obscured parts of the universe. Many IceCube analyses study a diffuse neutrino flux—coming from all directions across the entire sky—that originate mostly […]
Blazars are active galactic nuclei (AGN)—supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies—that shoot out powerful jets of particles and light directed at Earth, making them some of the brightest objects in the universe. Because blazars can accelerate particles to extremely high energies, they are an attractive candidate as sources for high-energy neutrinos, the subject […]
The origins of cosmic rays—and the astrophysical sources responsible for producing and accelerating them—remain an open question in science. However, high-energy neutrinos, nearly massless subatomic particles, may hold the key to resolving this long-standing mystery. At the South Pole, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory occupies a cubic kilometer of ice in search of high-energy neutrinos from […]
Cosmic rays are charged particles that rain down on Earth from space, with energies that can reach as high as a fast-thrown baseball packed into a single subatomic particle. Although a lot is known about cosmic rays, their origin still remains a century-old mystery. The highest energy particles, called ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs), are closely […]
When charged particles from outer space called cosmic rays collide with particles in the Earth’s atmosphere, they create a shower of secondary particles (air showers) that cascade down to Earth. These secondary particles include photons, electrons, and muons. Some of these secondary particles reach the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole, a detector consisting […]
When cosmic rays crash into the Earth’s atmosphere, air showers containing atmospheric muons and neutrinos are produced. The atmospheric neutrinos are then detected by DeepCore, a denser array of sensors in the bottom center of the IceCube detector at the South Pole. Compared to the main IceCube detector, DeepCore is sensitive to neutrinos down to […]