The horizon at the South Pole continues to slowly brighten with every passing day. Unfortunately, the brownouts and blackouts that had occurred the prior week at the Pole also continued, but—again—all was brought back to normal with no major problems resulting. Also last week, IceCube winterover Moreno, in conjunction with Concordia Station, launched a radio-sounding […]
Gravitational waves (GWs) are a signature for some of the most energetic phenomena in the universe, which cause ripples in space-time that travel at the speed of light. These events, spurred by massive accelerating objects, act as cosmic messengers that carry with them clues to their origins. They are also probable sources for highly energetic […]
For over 20 years, physicists have performed experiments that hint at the existence of an elusive fourth type of neutrino, the “sterile” neutrino. Neutrinos—tiny, almost massless particles—are also known as “ghost particles” because they rarely interact with the matter they travel through. On the other hand, the appropriately named sterile neutrino does not interact with […]
Although high-energy cosmic rays have long been observed arriving at Earth, their origins have eluded researchers for years. The key may lie in neutrinos, which are tiny, nearly massless particles that can travel along a straight path from their sources. High-energy neutrinos that originate from outside our solar system are called cosmic neutrinos, which can […]
Although the skies were cloudy, the moon shone bright over the IceCube Lab (ICL) last week. IceCube winterovers were paged during the week for a misbehaving DOM, which required a trip out to the ICL (bonus: some nice moonlit photos), but in general it was a relatively calm week on the detector side of things. […]
Last week was action-packed at the South Pole. The beginning of the week had IceCube’s winterovers busy with diagnosing and troubleshooting some computer issues, which required a couple of visits to the IceCube Lab (ICL). They took advantage of these visits to also perform a few maintenance tasks at the ICL while they were there. […]
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 […]