For the first time, an international team of scientists have found evidence of high-energy neutrino emission from NGC 1068, also known as Messier 77, an active galaxy in the constellation Cetus and one of the most familiar and well-studied galaxies to date. The results were published on November 4, 2022 in Science (link). See the […]
Week 42 at the Pole
Sometimes it’s just plain quiet at the Pole. It’s summer, the sun’s out, and the temperatures are…well, let’s just say it’s cold. Above is a nice view of the South Pole station on a sunny day. And below is IceCube winterover Celas, whose remaining days at the Pole are numbered, taking advantage of the sun […]
IceCube analysis indicates there are many high-energy astrophysical neutrino sources
Back in 2013, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory—a cubic-kilometer neutrino detector embedded in Antarctic ice—announced the first observation of high-energy (above 100 TeV) neutrinos originating from outside our solar system, spawning a new age in astronomy. Four years later, on September 22, 2017, a high-energy neutrino event was detected coincident with a gamma-ray flare from a […]
IceCube Webinar
Join us to hear exciting IceCube results! Thursday, November 3, 1:00 – 2:00 pm U.S. CDT […]
IceCube probes for quantum gravity using astrophysical neutrino flavors
Neutrinos are ghostly, nearly massless particles that can travel extraordinarily large distances unimpeded. Because of this, neutrinos act as “messengers,” harboring information about their sources. Although most detected neutrinos originate from the sun or Earth’s atmosphere, there exist highly energetic astrophysical neutrinos that originate from the farthest reaches of outer space. In 2013, the first […]
Newly discovered optical effect allows IceCube to deduce ice crystal properties
Every second, 100 trillion neutrinos pass through the human body. These tiny, almost massless particles travel tremendous distances through space while carrying information about their sources and are created by some of the most energetic phenomena in the universe. But neutrinos are incredibly difficult to detect, requiring a one-of-a-kind detector that can “see” these nearly […]
Week 41 at the Pole
So, you’ve arrived at the Geographic South Pole—or have you? The sign might not help much on its own, but now that the sun is out we can see where we are from the surroundings (yes, it’s the geographic South Pole). Below is a close-up view of the current 2022 South Pole marker, which was […]
Week 40 at the Pole
Now there’s a bright sun! And it looks like it’s shining over a body of water with choppy waves. But that’s just an illusion, stemming from the shadows cast by a low sun over the rough icy surface at the South Pole. There’s another apparition above, where something appears to be stretching across the entire […]
Scaling to infinity and beyond: Using Google Cloud to explore the origins of the universe
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is one of a growing number of science initiatives to use scalable cloud infrastructure to process massive datasets. […]
Week 39 at the Pole
Last week was another quiet week at the Pole. And it was cloudy and windy again, with the slowly rising sun mostly obscured in the sky. IceCube’s winterovers were paged a few times to go out to the IceCube Lab, so they were out and about in the cloudy, windy landscape. Above we see the […]