Although it is still night at the South Pole, the sun is making a slow rise toward the horizon, and it’s getting close to twilight. Some folks are excited to see the sun again, while others mourn the end of winter. But it will take weeks for the sun to fully rise over the horizon, […]
Last week at the Pole was restful—finally. No Polympics or other competitive sporting events, no emergency response training, no outreach talks…and a super-quiet detector. The IceCube detector’s uptime was 99.95%, its maximum value given small downtimes required for maintenance and operation. The night skies on the other hand were not so quiet. A major solar […]
With the Polympics now over, you’d think the winterovers might be resting a bit—but not this crew. Last week at the Pole, a number of winterovers, including IceCube’s Celas, participated in a tetrathalon competition with another station. This event had them running on treadmills and skiing outside, which for Celas was only his second time […]
Last week at the Pole it was still “first work, then play.” The “work” entailed more or less routine monthly maintenance tasks and reporting. The “play,” on the other hand, was anything but routine. Last week marked the end of the Polympics, although the Antarctic Games extended for another week. At the Pole, there were […]
First there’s work, then there’s play. Last week at the Pole, IceCube’s winterovers were paged during the night (twice!) and had to trek out to the IceCube Lab for some troubleshooting. Unfortunately, no night sky photos were taken on these trips. But in their spare time, planning continued for this year’s Antarctic Games. The team […]
Last week at the Pole was quiet for the IceCube detector but a bit busy in the South Pole station, where the first planning meeting for the upcoming Antarctic Games was held. Several years ago, the South Pole station inaugurated its version of the Olympic winter games. Since then, they have held an annual “Polympics” […]
In 2012, shortly after the IceCube Neutrino Observatory was completed, the IceCube Collaboration announced in Nature an important and unexpected result in neutrino astrophysics: gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), which were one of the two leading candidates for sources of high-energy neutrinos and cosmic rays, did not report any neutrino excesses. Since then, IceCube has continued to […]
Former winterover Yuya Makino was recently awarded First Prize in the “At a Glance” category for The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) 100 photo contest for his entry titled “Chasing Ghost Particles at the South Pole.” The IUPAP 100 photo contest celebrates the beauty of physics and the fun that can be […]
Even though they recently had a fancy dinner at the South Pole, last week supplied a reason for another one. It was the celebratory feast for midwinter, which included cocktails and appetizers followed by a several-course meal. Guests were invited to attend dressed for a masquerade ball. The South Pole station has a long history […]
After weeks of intense activity spent on networking activities, last week at the Pole felt like things were back to normal. Normal included some troubleshooting work and data integration test runs, but there were some quiet times during the week as well. Was it cold outside? Of course it was (it’s not only the South […]