IceCube was stable last week, but the same can’t be said for the weather at the Pole. They had high winds and mostly conditions of low visibility from blowing snow. But there were a few brief moments where things cleared, and the sun was visible on the horizon. The low sun highlights the texture of […]
Today is the final day of IceCube’s spring 2021 collaboration meeting. For the third time, the semi-annual meeting was held virtually due to the pandemic. With 338 registered participants, it is likely the most attended IceCube collaboration meeting ever. Every weekday for the last two weeks, IceCube collaborators from around the world tuned into Zoom […]
Last week was relatively quiet at the Pole. IceCube’s winterovers performed a few detector maintenance tasks and gave a tour of the ICL to South Pole logistics personnel. Although winter is fast approaching and the sun is quite low, there is still plenty of daylight for taking outdoor photos. Above we see the tour group […]
The sun is getting noticeably lower in the sky at the South Pole. IceCube’s winterovers also note that it’s starting to get cold. Apparently, there’s “cold” and then there’s “South Pole cold.” Last week, the winterovers were busy outdoors, taking advantage of the lingering light to complete a round of IceTop snow measurements. They also […]
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 […]
On December 8, 2016, IceCube saw a Glashow resonance event, a phenomenon predicted by Nobel laureate physicist Sheldon Glashow in 1960. With this detection, scientists provided another confirmation of the Standard Model of particle physics. It also further demonstrated the ability of IceCube, which detects nearly massless particles called neutrinos using thousands of sensors embedded […]
Introduction This data release accompanies results published in Nature describing detection of the first candidate Glashow resonance event. The event was found to have a reconstructed visible energy of 6.05 ± 0.72 PeV, consistent with an electron antineutrino interacting via the Glashow resonance. In addition, early pulses were detected on three DOMs that confirm the […]
Last week was relatively quiet at the Pole, offering a good opportunity to get out and reflag the flag line between the IceCube Lab (ICL) and the station. They drill new holes and replace flags as needed to keep the line well maintained. The flags are easy to see now while the sun is still […]
Well, now it’s official—the South Pole station has closed for the winter. Above is a great shot that IceCube winterover Martin captured of the last passenger-carrying plane to depart. Below, the plane is shown being refueled, followed by a view of its take-off as it heads for McMurdo captured from the station’s observation deck. The […]
It’s still light outside, but winter at the South Pole is fast approaching. There were both arrivals and departures last week, and we can see that the departures (above) well outnumbered the arrivals (below). At this point, all the winterovers who will remain on station for this winter have arrived, and team building activities are […]