
The IceCube Neutrino Detector at the South Pole Hits Paydirt - amynordrum
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/aerospace/astrophysics/the-icecube-neutrino-detector-at-the-south-pole-hits-paydirt
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dekhn
My coworker went down to the South Pole to install Debian on the IceCube
cluster (funny story: it's hard to cool servers there because the air is
really dry) ~14 years ago. Basically, a 48 hour trip both ways just to insert
a CD and press reset. We were all jealous.

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throwa_way_
>it's hard to cool servers there because the air is really dry

Not sure how this could be the case. Dry air has higher thermal conductivity
than moist air.

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jws
Dry air also increases the probability of static damage. They probably can't
use outside air exchange to cool the server room.

I imagine just circulating your nice toasty air into a larger area filled with
moist humans who want to be warmer would work, but it depends on your building
layout.

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8bitsrule
Static damage? Where I was raised, winter temps regularly reached -40. That
cold, outside air already had most of the moisture 'wrung out of it'. Now let
that cold dry air into the house and warm it: the relative humidity plummets.

Now walk across a carpet in leather-soled shoes. Do NOT even touch metal
doorknobs, let alone metal faucets!

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aaronbrethorst
A favorite game of my siblings and I during the winter growing up in Minnesota
was to shuffle across the floor and then poke each other.

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aplc0r
In the winter (in MN), I usually wake up to my dog shocking us nose-to-nose
while he checks if I'm still sleeping.

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aaronbrethorst
I'm kind of surprised he hasn't been trained out of this from the
pain/surprise. Seems like sort of a shock collar effect.

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nategri
Recovering astroparticle physics PhD here.

I read this news with great interest because I thought they might have finally
detected the flux of neutrinos predicted by the GZK process[1]. But, this
can't be the case because 1) 10^14 eV is probably on the low side for GZK
neutrinos, and (more importantly!) 2) that flux would be fairly isotropic, and
not from point source.

But still! Exciting results! IceCube is an ambitious and wonderful detector
and I'm always pleased to see it in the news.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greisen%E2%80%93Zatsepin%E2%80...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greisen%E2%80%93Zatsepin%E2%80%93Kuzmin_limit)

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cozzyd
Nah, the IceCube neutrinos are probably photonuclear with local photons rather
than CMB photons.

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throwaway2016a
Is this how other people hear software developers when we talk about code?

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ryanhuff
Yes. And the same goes with finance people, and people in lots of other
fields. Jargon rich conversations that outsiders think is mumbo-jumbo.

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IrishJourno
I'm the author of the Spectrum article: this is the exact reason why I get
paid for my job :)

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fit2rule
You did a great job of inspiring me to understand something I have, literally,
not even the foggiest iota of a clue about. I finished your article in awe at
the human species.

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IrishJourno
Then I consider that a job very well done :) We can do some pretty neat stuff
as a species when we want to...

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Tiki
I'm just in awe that we're coordinating events world wide based on particle
interactions one of which originated billions of light years away. That we're
able to understand a little more about the vast space we live in because of
it, the human cooperation, the technology, the amount of curiosity it took to
get here, it's beautiful.

~~~
bacon_waffle
Totally! IceCube is such an amazing combination of great people, great
Science, great engineering, and a completely amazing place where it all comes
together (places, really, both Madison WI and South Pole ;) ). And, as you
say, IceCube is just one project involved in this discovery.

All that effort focused on one incomprehensibly small neutrino...

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southpolesteve
I worked on this project in college and went down to the south pole after
graduation to help install some of the detectors. Neat to see the results! ~10
years later.

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bmease
The scientists at the IceCube Neutrino Detector are currently doing an AMA on
reddit[0] for those interested.

[0]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/8yajhh/were_scientist...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/8yajhh/were_scientists_with_the_icecube_neutrino/)

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phyzome
Off-topic: Imagine discovering the IceCube detector 10,000 years from now, and
trying to figure out what it was for.

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bacon_waffle
I guess the details will depend on whether it happens before or after the
discovery of the giant poo-bergs nearby :).

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redcalx
I believe all the poo is taken away.

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bacon_waffle
Nope, at South Pole it's pumped in to the ice. In general, there's an amazing
amount of refuse down there, it's a very expensive place to ship things out
from...

The water supply for the station comes from a rodwell, which is effectively a
big bubble of molten ice, sustained by heat from the diesel generators. Once
the rodwell gets to a certain size, some water can be extracted for use on
station, and the bubble lowers progressively in to the ice. Eventually, the
liquid surface in the well gets too deep for the pump in the well to pump
water all the way to the surface, so a new well is started.

Waste water then goes in to the void left from the old well; poo, gunk off the
dirty dishes, etc all included.

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FatherPaulStone
Nice article. Some guys in my place are working on a new machine which
generates and detects neutrinos. It's called DUNE. It uses a super conducting
linear proton accelerator to generate them and 100s of massive liquid helium
cooled wire detectors 800miles away! Super exciting project.

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gattr
If anyone's interested in other unusual (i.e. other than an optical imaging
telescope) detectors, have a look at Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes
[0]. More details can be found e.g. in [1].

TL;DR: how to detect a very high-energy gamma-ray photon? Either with an
orbital observatory (but these have limited size); or let the photon hit upper
atmosphere (at a few tens of km), create (together with some atmospheric
nucleus) a fast electron-positron pair, which through additional interactions
eventually causes a narrow cone of Cherenkov light to shine all the way down
to the ground (having ~100 m diameter there), and then gather this light with
an array of a few large reflectors. Finally, perform some tricky processing to
recover the initial photon's direction and energy.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IACT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IACT)
[2] [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1510.05675](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1510.05675)

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King-Aaron
I'm honestly in awe of that diagram of the detector. I'd seen pictures of the
surface structure of the lab, but I had no idea there was an antenna array
nearly two and a half kilometres deep..

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js2
ieee link includes an interstitial and then fails to load the article for me,
probably my ad blocker. Alternate reporting:

[https://www.npr.org/2018/07/12/628142995/a-4-billion-
light-y...](https://www.npr.org/2018/07/12/628142995/a-4-billion-light-year-
journey-ends-at-the-south-pole)

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jen729w
The original is worth the read, it’s excellent.

[http://archive.is/T9DB4](http://archive.is/T9DB4)

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Latteland
What a great story. That article was inspiring and easy to understand. It
makes me proud to be a human, really!

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IrishJourno
Thanks! :)

