Comments on: Guest Post: Michelangelo D’Agostino on Particle Physics Fieldwork in Antarctica

By: correction

correction — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 23:27:06 +0000

Lawrence,

They’re not melting the ice to get liquid water, they’re just doing it to get a hole to lower a string of detectors into (they lay these out on a grid). The un-melted ice acts as the scintillator. It’s a really cool project, although staggeringly expensive (I was told that the diesel fuel necessary to make one of their holes takes more than one LC-130 flight from McMurdo).

By: Lawrence B. Crowell

Lawrence B. Crowell — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 23:10:11 +0000

Science had an article on ICECUBE about a year ago. As I remember the whole thing is basically a large Cherenkov detector. I suppose the melted glacier water is very pure and a good medium to put detectors in.

I have to admit that it is too bad that the idea place is not in the Bahamas.

Lawrence B. Crowell

By: Cynthia

Cynthia — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 20:51:14 +0000

Michelangelo,

Reading this story of yours makes me wanna join your South Pole team — despite the fact that I’m a total wimp when it comes to the cold… But I believe I’ll have little (if any) trouble tolerating the cold IceCube, so long as your travel writing is there to keep me warm!;~)

By: Michelangelo

Michelangelo — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 18:51:11 +0000

We’re not really sensitive to geoneutrinos, unfortunately. They’re way below our energy threshold. Even the smaller, much more densely instrumented detectors like KAMLand, which have seen geoneutrinos, had to do quite a bit of work to extract such a low energy signal.

By: MedallionOfFerret

MedallionOfFerret — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 04:28:37 +0000

Experimental work on dark matter? Sounds like another great post somebody knowledgeable could put together.

By: Lab Lemming

Lab Lemming — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 03:04:35 +0000

Do you guys look at geoneutrinos as well, to determine the K/U/Th ratios of the antarctic crust?

By: Michelangelo

Michelangelo — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 22:56:09 +0000

Hey John. Using a large water deposit to do the same thing is not a bad idea. There are European groups (ANTARES, NEMO, NESTOR…) who are using the clear water of certain parts of the Mediterranean to build similar large volume neutrino telescopes. There are advantages and disadvantages to both techniques–ease of deployment, optical properties of the medium, noise, bio-fouling, etc. Certainly the quality of life in the south of France is slightly better than at the South Pole though…

Using Lake Vostok wouldn’t be much of a help. As a target, its volume of water is the same as an equivalent block of ice. Plus, you’d still have to drill down with hot water to deploy your instruments. And then, as you say, you’d be contaminating a Lake which is still, at the moment at least, a pristine target for astrobiologists.

By: John Ramsden

John Ramsden — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 21:20:58 +0000

Wouldn’t it be easier to use a very large water deposit that already exists under the ice, namely Lake Vostok, Russkies permitting (as it is apparently directly under their Antarctic base) and if at some 10,000′ down it isn’t too deep for your drills?

Your gear would need thorough sterilization first though, or else you’d risk introducing microbes into the lake and thereby hamper or ruin the chances of biologists who might wish to study bacteria which may have bred there since the ice froze over it originally.

By: Sean

Sean — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 21:07:49 +0000

Oops — I fixed the units there.

By: K

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 20:26:25 +0000

“Using hot water, we melt holes 2,500 km down into the ice and install very sensitive light detectors.”

I guess it is 2500meters. Exciting work..Nice post!