Last week was quiet for the IceCube detector but not so quiet for the South Pole station—lots of activity going on there. The third and final South Pole traverse of the season, SPOT3, arrived with its long load of fuel bladders, shown above and below, under a sun halo. SPOT3 was there just long enough […]
It took a solar eclipse and a balloon flying up to 5,300 meters to point to outer space as the origin of the ionizing radiation in the atmosphere. The discovery of cosmic rays was made by Victor Hess in 1912 and earned him the Nobel prize in 1936. Since then, scientists around the world use […]
Last week, after quite a few delays, the last 25 members of the South Pole winter crew arrived. It is not typical for half of the crew to arrive so late in the season, but international Covid precautions among other things have complicated the logistics of preparations and travel. The station will be closing soon […]
Last week some of the remaining 2021 winterovers departed the South Pole—the plane taking them away is shown above as it lifted off, with the IceCube Lab (ICL) in the background. While it’s still summer at the Pole and the sun is shining on many days, there’s no getting away from the cold and snow—those […]
Introduction This data release accompanies results submitted to Physical Review D describing the measurement of the density of GeV muons with IceTop. For further details, refer to the IceCube publication 10.1103/PhysRevD.106.032010. Data release Suggested citation for this dataset: IceCube Collaboration (2022): Density of GeV muons in air showers measured with IceTop – Public data release. […]
Last week was fairly quiet at the Pole. The IceCube winterovers dealt with a few detector issues and handled some other maintenance tasks and cargo-related activities. They also gave a tour of the IceCube Lab to other individuals currently stationed at the South Pole (photo above) and continued with emergency response training (last week: frostbite!). […]
Last week was generally busy at the Pole. There were lots of tours happening around the station, and IceCube’s winterovers Moreno and Celas were both taking tours (SuperDARN and BICEP) and giving them at the IceCube Lab. As members of the medical emergency response team, they both participated in scheduled drills last week, too. And […]
Sun halos have been plentiful the last few weeks at the South Pole. Above we see IceCube winterover Moreno walking off in the distance under a large halo. He was headed toward the “End of the World”—it’s what they call the area that extends beyond the storage berms out on the ice. Although the snow […]
Neutrinos have mass. Their mass is small, extremely small in fact, but contrary to what the Standard Model of particle physics predicts, they do have mass. A consequence of this nonstandard property is that neutrinos oscillate, which means that as they speed through matter or space, their flavor—or type—changes at a rate that depends on […]
Last week was the “last” (52nd) week of the year at the South Pole. As usual, there was a lot going on. For IceCube’s winterovers, this included dealing with a few detector issues, giving an IceCube Lab tour for a SPOT crew, locating containers of supplies buried in the snow, and continuing with medical emergency […]