All these high energy particles travel at tremendous speeds, and for them it looks like you traveled half the Universe in a fraction of a second. And then you've hit an Antarctic ice. I think I'd be extremely excited at this, because I'm sure any particle dreams about becoming alive, and falling on Earth give pretty solid chances to integrate into a living organism. And even maybe to fly to the Moon then, to build a base there! I always wonder what are they... I can't stand these romantic stories without knowing more about the heroes.
Is there any hope to have know more about them? To point at some and say "they are neutrinos" is a big promising step, but what about others? Was it a proton, or neutron, or electron or what? Where did this particle come from, and who was so pissed off to kick it that hard. I mean, I read wikipedia a lot, I have an idea what kind of processes can create these particles, but if we could find an extremely red shifted galaxy on a photo from James Webb and say that THAT proton came from there, it would be very nice.
> With a new data release expected soon, covering all five ARA stations over several years, the ARA team now anticipates up to seven candidate neutrino events.
I love the patience involved in this kind of science.
Is it just ice? I thought most neutrino detectors were large underground pools of water. I mean ... tomāto/tomăto, yes, but is solid water better than liquid water?
Summary for those who won't fight through four blocking pop-ups to read the article:
When a high-energy particle (cosmic ray, say) hits ice, it creates an interaction cascade. (Think of what the Fly's Eye experiment sees, but in ice.) That interaction cascade creates (among other things) a radio signal. This detector is a radio detector under Antarctic ice, looking for exactly that.
The point is that, if a high-energy neutrino were to hit the ice, it could create the same kind of cascade, but it would make it much further into the ice. By having multiple detectors, they can pin down the location, and so they can try to tell the difference between "regular" cosmic rays and high-energy neutrinos.
The detector seems to be functioning as designed. They have seven candidate neutrino interactions.
I just turned off my ad blocker to see how bad it is. Because with it turned on I didn't see any popups.
They have Google ads on their site promoting a paid ad free version of their site? WTF? Why would you pay google to put ads for on your site for your own service?
I was involved in this analysis if anybody has questions (though the student and postdoc did most of the real work)
All these high energy particles travel at tremendous speeds, and for them it looks like you traveled half the Universe in a fraction of a second. And then you've hit an Antarctic ice. I think I'd be extremely excited at this, because I'm sure any particle dreams about becoming alive, and falling on Earth give pretty solid chances to integrate into a living organism. And even maybe to fly to the Moon then, to build a base there! I always wonder what are they... I can't stand these romantic stories without knowing more about the heroes.
Is there any hope to have know more about them? To point at some and say "they are neutrinos" is a big promising step, but what about others? Was it a proton, or neutron, or electron or what? Where did this particle come from, and who was so pissed off to kick it that hard. I mean, I read wikipedia a lot, I have an idea what kind of processes can create these particles, but if we could find an extremely red shifted galaxy on a photo from James Webb and say that THAT proton came from there, it would be very nice.
Just read the title and thought "Not now Cthulu, we've got enough going on"
Next time I go to the site to dig out a station, maybe I'll leave a Ctulhu to surprise the next person :)
we didn't start the fire
it was always burning since the world was turning
Whereas i was thinking "it's about time a hero arrived!" ;)
i don't presume to know whether Cthulhu is the hero we need or the hero we deserve.
Definitely the one we deserve...
> With a new data release expected soon, covering all five ARA stations over several years, the ARA team now anticipates up to seven candidate neutrino events.
I love the patience involved in this kind of science.
Is it just ice? I thought most neutrino detectors were large underground pools of water. I mean ... tomāto/tomăto, yes, but is solid water better than liquid water?
The size of the detector can be very large, stable, and protected with an ice cap. https://icecube.wisc.edu/science/icecube/
There aren't a lot of places with multiple km of water without things like animal life or other confounders.
So, [controlled] liquid water is better but [controlled] solid water is more abundant?
I wouldn't say liquid is "better". The neutrinos don't care from a cross section standpoint.
Uniformity of the light field is going to be different, but that is not my sub-domain.
A liquid you control (and can densely instrument) is going to be a much easier to characterize detector than large volumes of natural material
Depends on the energy scale involved!
Higher energy = "easier" to detect (produce more light or radio emission), but the events are rarer so you want to build a bigger detector.
There are also underwater pools of water being used :) (KM3Net,P-ONE, Baikal-GVD, etc.)
Summary for those who won't fight through four blocking pop-ups to read the article:
When a high-energy particle (cosmic ray, say) hits ice, it creates an interaction cascade. (Think of what the Fly's Eye experiment sees, but in ice.) That interaction cascade creates (among other things) a radio signal. This detector is a radio detector under Antarctic ice, looking for exactly that.
The point is that, if a high-energy neutrino were to hit the ice, it could create the same kind of cascade, but it would make it much further into the ice. By having multiple detectors, they can pin down the location, and so they can try to tell the difference between "regular" cosmic rays and high-energy neutrinos.
The detector seems to be functioning as designed. They have seven candidate neutrino interactions.
I just turned off my ad blocker to see how bad it is. Because with it turned on I didn't see any popups.
They have Google ads on their site promoting a paid ad free version of their site? WTF? Why would you pay google to put ads for on your site for your own service?
Pluribus, be careful