Neutrino physics is perhaps the most active field in particle physics today, and IceCube is at this forefront. And since the neutrino is one of the strangest and least understood of the known elementary particles, this is fertile ground. Its scientific goals span not only astrophysics and cosmology but also pure particle physics. In 2010, it detected the first extraterrestrial high-energy neutrinos and thus gave birth to a new field of astronomy.Īside from being a telescope, IceCube is the largest particle physics detector ever built. It employs a cubic kilometer of diamond-clear ice, more than a mile beneath the surface, to detect an elementary particle known as the neutrino. Amundsen-Scott Research Station at the geographic South Pole, IceCube is unlike most telescopes in that it is not designed to detect light.
It's the inside story of the people who built the instrument, the mistakes they made, the blind alleys they went down, the solutions they found, their conflicts, and their teamwork. The Telescope in the Ice is about the building of IceCube, which Scientific American has called the "weirdest" of the seven wonders of modern astronomy.
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