Machine learning has arrived at the South Pole. Well, not literally, but machine learning is now being applied to data collected at the South Pole by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, an unconventional telescope made up of thousands of sensors buried in ice. IceCube’s goal is to detect tiny, nearly massless particles called neutrinos that fly […]
Ever since the first detection of gravitational waves by LIGO and Virgo, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory has been searching for neutrino counterparts to gravitational waves. Detecting both gravitational waves and neutrinos from the same source would be a groundbreaking step in multimessenger astronomy, the field that uses multiple kinds of cosmic messengers to see the […]
Our sun shines not only in light but also in neutrinos. These tiny, chargeless, and nearly massless particles are produced deep in the sun’s core, but we also expect them to be created in the solar atmosphere, either by collisions of cosmic rays or during solar flares. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole, a […]
When the IceCube Neutrino Observatory sees a high-energy neutrino from outer space, IceCube researchers want to know where it came from. The unconventional “telescope” uses a three-dimensional grid of supersensitive light sensors buried under the ice at the South Pole to detect signals from these tiny, nearly massless fundamental particles, which rarely interact and can […]
On December 8, 2016,* a high-energy particle called an electron antineutrino hurtled to Earth from outer space at close to the speed of light carrying 6.3 petaelectronvolts (PeV) of energy. Deep inside the ice sheet at the South Pole, it smashed into an electron and produced a particle that quickly decayed into a shower of […]
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory has a uniquely close relationship with ice. The telescope needs ice—and a lot of it—to detect the astrophysical neutrinos it was built to study. In fact, most of IceCube’s instruments are embedded in a cubic kilometer of ice at the South Pole. Construction of the detector required drilling 2.5 kilometers straight […]
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory, an array of over 5,000 light sensors embedded in a cubic-kilometer of ice at the South Pole, was built to detect astrophysical neutrinos: mysterious and nearly massless particles that carry information about the most energetic events in the cosmos. Every time IceCube sees something that might be a cosmic neutrino, it […]
The IceCube Collaboration searches for neutrino sources using a variety of analysis methods. In a paper submitted yesterday to The Astrophysical Journal, the collaboration describes a time-dependent all-sky scan using five years of IceCube data as well as a specific analysis of blazar 3C 279. The analyses did not reveal any new neutrino point sources. […]
In a paper submitted recently to JCAP, the IceCube Collaboration describes a search for sub-TeV neutrino emission from astrophysical “transient” sources. This is the first transient result from IceCube to use all neutrino flavors in the 1-100 GeV energy region. In the absence of any observed sources in three years of archival IceCube data, the researchers established new limits on the volumetric rate of transients. […]
The number of neutrinos that IceCube detects is dependent on many factors, including the “neutrino cross section”: how likely it is for neutrinos to interact with nuclei in the ice. In a paper submitted today to Physical Review D, the IceCube Collaboration reports a new cross section measurement obtained by using 7.5 years of IceCube data. This is the first such measurement to incorporate all three neutrino flavors. […]