The IceCube experiment takes advantage of this detection method on a much larger scale.

Neutrinos can knock out electrons from the water molecules that will travel faster than the speed of light in that medium and thereby produce Cherenkov light, which is also responsible for the healthy blue glow that emanates from nuclear reactors. Some experiments use large tanks filled with pure water and equipped with light sensors as detectors. The Largest Detector Ever Built Schematic diagram of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory.Ĭredit: Nasa-verve – IceCube Science Team – Francis Halzen, Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin, CC BY 3.0īecause neutrinos have no charge and are only affected by the weak interaction (and gravity) they are hard to detect. The neutrinos on earth have different origins: there are solar neutrinos produced in the fusion processes of our sun, atmospheric neutrinos produced by cosmic rays hitting our atmosphere, manmade reactor neutrinos created in the radioactive decays of nuclear reactors, geoneutrinos which stem from similar processes naturally occurring inside the earth, and astrophysical neutrinos produced outside of our solar system during supernovae and other extreme processes most of which are still unknown.

In addition, they are valuable messengers from the most extreme astrophysical phenomena like supernovae, and supermassive black holes. We still do not know their mass and they might even be there own anti-particles while their siblings could make up the dark matter in our Universe. Neutrinos are part of many unsolved questions in physics. This is how they earned the popular name ‘ghost particle’. About 100 billion of them are going through every square centimeter on Earth per second but their interaction rate is so low that they can easily zip through the entire planet. Neutrinos are some of the strangest particles we have encountered so far.

The Telescope in the Ice by Mark Bowen