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 […]
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 […]
We are all surrounded by magnets. Whether they’re on your fridge, in your smartphone, or in your credit card, the magnets you interact with all have one thing in common (well, two things): they each have a north and south pole. Could a magnet ever have just one pole? Yes, according to scientists, and it’s […]
On December 28, 2021, P. Buford Price, a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley and a member of the IceCube Collaboration, passed away. Buford, who defined himself as an experimentalist who liked to develop projects that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries, was a founding member of the AMANDA project and collaboration, which demonstrated […]
A lot happened at the Pole last week, even though there aren’t a lot of pictures to show for it. First of all, IceCube winterover Celas returned after a short necessary trip to McMurdo Station, much to the delight of IceCube winterover Moreno, who had been holding down the fort on his own in the […]
Last week was generally busy at the South Pole. The first LC-130 of the season arrived, staying long enough to offload its contents and then reload with cargo to take back to McMurdo. You can see the IceCube Lab off in the distance below, between the snow tractor and the plane. Last week also happened […]