DeepCore construction begins The first specialized string for DeepCore—the infill at the center of the IceCube array consisting of eight more densely deployed strings of modules—was successfully deployed in January 2009. DeepCore substantially enhanced the detector’s sensitivity at low energies: The amount of light produced when a neutrino interacts is proportional to the neutrino energy, […]
Timeline Slider
2008
ANTARES neutrino detector in the Mediterranean Sea is completed In the same vein as DUMAND, the ANTARES (Astronomy with a Neutrino Telescope and Abyss environmental RESearch project) neutrino detector is an array of optical modules 2.5 kilometers deep in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Toulon, France. It uses the same detection principles as […]
2005
AMANDA and IceCube merge to form a single IceCube Collaboration On March 20, 2005, after nine years of operation, AMANDA officially became part of IceCube! […]
2004
IceCube construction begins at the South Pole How do you construct a cubic kilometer detector in the Antarctic ice? Slowly, carefully…and with a 4.8-megawatt hot-water drill that can penetrate more than two kilometers into the ice in less than two days. After the hot-water drill bores cleanly through the ice sheet, deployment specialists attach optical […]
2002
National Science Board approves initial funding for IceCube construction In March 2002, the National Science Board (NSB), the 24-member policy body for the National Science Foundation (NSF), approved a $15 million award for the IceCube project. A year later in May 2003, the NSB would approve up to $24.54 million for the University of Wisconsin […]
2001
AMANDA publishes first neutrino sky map in Nature On March 22, 2001, the initial results from AMANDA came out in Nature. Over 138 days in 1997, AMANDA’s sensors saw 263 high-energy neutrinos, and they produced a map showing the origins of those particles in the sky. As Francis Halzen told a Nature writer, “This is […]
2000
AMANDA-II neutrino detector at the South Pole is completed AMANDA’s later development stage was known as AMANDA-II. Nine additional strings were added in 2000, bringing the array to a total of 677 optical modules mounted on 19 separate strings that were spread out in a rough circle with a diameter of 200 meters. AMANDA-II operated […]
1999
IceCube submits proposal for cubic-kilometer South Pole neutrino detector In November 1999, the fledgling IceCube Collaboration (mostly members of the AMANDA Collaboration) submitted a 67-page proposal for a cubic-kilometer neutrino detector at the South Pole to the US National Science Foundation and to partners in Belgium, Germany, and Sweden. In it, the University of Wisconsin–Madison […]
1996
Lake Baikal neutrino telescope detects neutrinos Another Markov-style neutrino detector was built in Lake Baikal, Russia. The largest and deepest freshwater lake in the world, Lake Baikal had extremely clear and unpolluted water whose surface froze in the winter, making it an ideal environment in which to deploy a neutrino telescope. Just after its four […]
1993
AMANDA construction at the South Pole begins The first phase of the AMANDA array, called AMANDA-A, was installed during the 1993-1994 austral summer. Holes were drilled using a hot-water drilling technique that had been developed by glaciologists. AMANDA-A consisted of four strings with 20 optical modules each, spaced 10 meters apart. The strings were deployed […]