Speaker 1: Get in test with technology with text stuff from stuff
Speaker 1: coming either everyone, and welcome to tech stuff. I'm Jonathan
Speaker 1: Strickland and today's topic comes to us courtesy of a listener.
Speaker 1: Actually I had blogged about this topic. It's the ice
Speaker 1: cube neutrino telescope, and I wrote a little Twitter message about, Hey,
Speaker 1: I got to write about this telescope that's buried a
Speaker 1: mile beneath the ice, And immediately Nick on Twitter said
Speaker 1: you should do a podcast about that, And I thought
Speaker 1: I should do a podcast about that because I've already
Speaker 1: done the research for that thing. That's why you got
Speaker 1: this research out so quickly. Well, you know, repurposing. No, No,
Speaker 1: it's actually here's the thing. Well one, it's buried under
Speaker 1: the ice, so already it's super cool. But I'm sorry
Speaker 1: it's already started. But I genuinely find this absolutely fascinating.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's the world's largest neutrino detector, it's
Speaker 1: buried a mile under the ice. It's this is something
Speaker 1: that if you had told me was in a science
Speaker 1: fiction story, I would have said, that's just silly, that's
Speaker 1: a that's a lame bond villain's layer. Yeah, there's no
Speaker 1: way that would really exist, and it totally exists. So
Speaker 1: what is it looking for. It's looking for evidence of neutrinos,
Speaker 1: which are these massless or nearly massless particles with no
Speaker 1: electrical charge. And we'll talk more about them a little
Speaker 1: bit later. Yeah, because specifically it's looking for for interactions
Speaker 1: of neutrinos with stuff. But but well, yes, yeah, because
Speaker 1: as it turns out, neutrinos are a little tricky. But
Speaker 1: they It is at the South Pole, or really it's
Speaker 1: underneath it. It's in Antarctica, and specifically, like I said,
Speaker 1: it's about a mile beneath the surface of the ice,
Speaker 1: between between one and two thousand meters or one to
Speaker 1: one point five miles. Yeah, it's pretty incredible. That's and
Speaker 1: it takes up about a cubic kilometer of ice, which
Speaker 1: is about two thirds of a mile on each side.
Speaker 1: So just imagine an area underneath the surface of the
Speaker 1: ice and Antarctica that is this kilometer by a kilometer
Speaker 1: by a kilometer in in in proportions, and that is
Speaker 1: a telescope. And the reason why it's there is because well,
Speaker 1: there's a couple of reasons. One is that the ice
Speaker 1: provides a medium through which the neutrinos travel, and an
Speaker 1: exceptionally clear medium at that the pressure of the ice
Speaker 1: that deep has has pushed all the air bubbles out, right,
Speaker 1: so it's incredibly clear. And also when you get to
Speaker 1: be about a mile down below the surface, things get
Speaker 1: a little dark, especially when sunlight isn't hitting you for
Speaker 1: what seven or eight months out of the year, right, Right,
Speaker 1: So it's already in a part of the world where, yeah,
Speaker 1: for eight months of the or you have no sun
Speaker 1: and it's a mile down and so it's really really dark.
Speaker 1: The medium it's in is really clear. And both of
Speaker 1: those things are incredibly important. So when was this thing
Speaker 1: actually built? Well, it was proposed in yeah, but um,
Speaker 1: it wasn't actually approved as a project until May first,
Speaker 1: two thousand four. Right, They began building it in December
Speaker 1: two thousand four. They started melting the holes they would
Speaker 1: need to drill down to put the various censors that
Speaker 1: are part of this telescope. Uh, they started drilling those
Speaker 1: on on December one, two thousand four. The very last
Speaker 1: censor was placed in a December, Yes, so six years
Speaker 1: to do a complete telescope. Now they had already started
Speaker 1: to gather information from the censors they had placed up
Speaker 1: to that point, but it wasn't until they did that
Speaker 1: last row in two thousand ten for it to be
Speaker 1: a completed project. So pretty cool. And um, we cost
Speaker 1: you know, a couple of bucks, right, easily two seventy
Speaker 1: one million, as we would say in the old days
Speaker 1: of tech stuff, a princely some most of that money
Speaker 1: was provided by the National Science Foundation. They footed the
Speaker 1: bill for a tune of two forty two million, and
Speaker 1: the rest came from funders from all well, all around
Speaker 1: the world. Really, so it's truly an international effort. It's
Speaker 1: not something that is controlled by one entity. Uh. There's
Speaker 1: a kind of a consortium called the ice Cube Collaboration
Speaker 1: that sort of represents all the different parties involved. Right.
Speaker 1: It has a total staff of about two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty people from forty one institutions in twelve countries overall. Um,
Speaker 1: it's all led out of the University of Wisconsin Madison, right,
Speaker 1: and some of the institutions that are part of this
Speaker 1: include the University of Delaware. Uh. They designed some of
Speaker 1: the key elements for the project, the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab,
Speaker 1: Clark Atlanta University. Shout out to a low cool school. Hey,
Speaker 1: how about my rival college, Georgia Tech. Uh I of
Speaker 1: course went to the University of Georgia. Georgia Tech are
Speaker 1: are hated enemies. They were part of this as well.
Speaker 1: So we could actually we could literally go down the
Speaker 1: street and probably find someone who works work on the project,
Speaker 1: works on this project, which is kind of exciting. The
Speaker 1: Neils Bore Institute. You might have heard of us talking
Speaker 1: about that when we did our Heisenberg episode. There's also
Speaker 1: Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, Stockholm University, University of Alberta, Edmonton,
Speaker 1: University of Canterbury in New Zealand, and Oxford, so among
Speaker 1: lots of others. So, I mean, it's a it's it's
Speaker 1: a really big project and it's something that a lot
Speaker 1: of people, you know, physicists and engineers and computer science
Speaker 1: kids have been really excited to get in on exactly
Speaker 1: and when you start looking into what this telescope does
Speaker 1: and the hesitated used the word, but the scope of
Speaker 1: the project, it's it's you know, it's understandable why people
Speaker 1: are so eager to be part of it. Lauren is
Speaker 1: judging me and grinning and shaking your head. Uh So,
Speaker 1: let's talk about what it is they're looking for. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about these neutrinos, these nearly massless particles. So there's
Speaker 1: sub atomic particles, meaning that they're smaller than actual atoms.
Speaker 1: And what's really interesting about them is is that they're
Speaker 1: they're electrically neutral, yeah, which means that they aren't affected
Speaker 1: by electro magnetic fields or forces exactly. They they So
Speaker 1: if you were to have, say, a positively charged particle
Speaker 1: and ion flying through space, and it happened to come
Speaker 1: either close to another positively charged body, it would be
Speaker 1: repulsed by that and its direction would change, or if
Speaker 1: it came close to a negatively charged body, would be
Speaker 1: attracted to that, and again its course would change, meaning
Speaker 1: that there'd be no way for you to tell where
Speaker 1: that particle originated from because they bounce around. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: could have been moving all over the place. It would
Speaker 1: look kind of like the old Family Circus cartoons where
Speaker 1: Billy's pathway does the little dotted line over the entire neighborhood.
Speaker 1: You just don't know where it came from. But neutrinos
Speaker 1: don't have that charge, so they're not affected by positive
Speaker 1: or negative charges. That won't change the pathway. So to
Speaker 1: you know that they're traveling in a straight line, and
Speaker 1: they're traveling extremely fast. Because they are massless or near massless,
Speaker 1: they can travel right up nosing up to the to
Speaker 1: the speed of light right now. Obviously, if they were
Speaker 1: to travel to the speed of light, that would be
Speaker 1: a problem. According to the theory of relativity, anything with
Speaker 1: mass would require infinite energy to get to the speed
Speaker 1: of light. So it's close but not quite the speed
Speaker 1: of light. And uh, depending upon the medium, it can
Speaker 1: actually travel faster than light within that media, not within
Speaker 1: the vacuum of space, but within the medium of say,
Speaker 1: I don't know ice. This will be important later on. Um.
Speaker 1: But but back to the basics here. Okay, So, so
Speaker 1: we think that they're the second most common particle in
Speaker 1: the entire universe, the first being photons. Right, So the
Speaker 1: fundamental unit of light is more there's more of that
Speaker 1: than neutrinos. But that's the only thing out there besides
Speaker 1: the stuff we can't identify, like dark matter, but we'll
Speaker 1: get into that too, yes, um. And and there's there's
Speaker 1: three basic types of neutrinos or um or flavors as
Speaker 1: they are legitimately called in physics, right, which makes me
Speaker 1: just so excited. So it's vanilla chocolate and rocky road.
Speaker 1: Is that it U close electron, muon, and taw neutrinos alright,
Speaker 1: So electrons, muans and taw are all negatively charged particles.
Speaker 1: Electrons are subatomic particles, thank you. Uh they are the
Speaker 1: electrons I would say are the most familiar to people.
Speaker 1: Everyone who has taken basic science knows the electrons the
Speaker 1: negatively charged particle that you find in atoms. They have
Speaker 1: uh energy shells that they stay in and orbit around
Speaker 1: a eight an atomic nucleus um. So you know those
Speaker 1: were familiar with. Muans and taw are a little more exotic.
Speaker 1: They are actually heavier than electrons, but they also have
Speaker 1: a negative charge. Right, Mulons have about twice the mass
Speaker 1: of electrons, and how have almost four times the massive electrons.
Speaker 1: And now most of what we know about neutrinos really
Speaker 1: only comes from research done in the past couple of decades.
Speaker 1: But we will get to that. Yeah, well you've got
Speaker 1: a whole timeline that was actually really fascinating to me too.
Speaker 1: Once again, it's one of those examples how people way
Speaker 1: smarter than I am are able to figure out things
Speaker 1: about the universe without ever actually seeing any proof of it,
Speaker 1: which is phenomenal with with answers to questions that we
Speaker 1: have not even thought of. Yeah, I would just think
Speaker 1: my equations must be wrong because things aren't equaling out.
Speaker 1: These are people are saying, my equations can't be wrong.
Speaker 1: So something's going on that I don't know about. I
Speaker 1: need to invent a new particle to explain it exactly.
Speaker 1: And it turned out it works. So where do they
Speaker 1: come from? Well, from from a bunch of different places.
Speaker 1: They can come from lots of cosmological events like um
Speaker 1: like like supernova more or even the Sun. Okay, so
Speaker 1: so you know weak stuff, right, this little low power
Speaker 1: now obviously black holes, no big yeah, exactly, little stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, just the things that can rip a galaxy apart. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It turns out that neutrinos can be generated lots of
Speaker 1: different ways. But the ones that we are particularly interested
Speaker 1: in are these high energy neutrinos that would be so
Speaker 1: high energy as to be it would be impossible for
Speaker 1: them to have originated in our solar system, right, because
Speaker 1: we can detect the neutrinos that come to us courtesy
Speaker 1: of the Sun or the ones that are formed within
Speaker 1: the Earth's atmosphere, but the more elusive ones are neutrinos
Speaker 1: that might come from a cosmological event that happened on
Speaker 1: the other side of the galaxy millions of years ago.
Speaker 1: Well and and those those larger events create vastly more
Speaker 1: neutrinos than say, the Sun would create on any given day.
Speaker 1: But since the Sun is so much closer to us,
Speaker 1: we're basically in and did with with neutrinos from the Sun,
Speaker 1: Electron neutrinos specifically um as a byproduct of the nuclear
Speaker 1: fusion that goes on in in the sun where uh
Speaker 1: you know, if you if you hold up your hand
Speaker 1: to sunlight, billions of neutrinos passed through it in a
Speaker 1: single second. Yeah. Now, remember, because these are sub atomic
Speaker 1: particles and they have no mass, these things, they're so
Speaker 1: small and they're moving so quickly, they can pass right
Speaker 1: through what would appear to be completely solid matter. Because
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know this or not, solid
Speaker 1: matter still has gaps in it at the atomic level,
Speaker 1: and so a neutrino can pass right through that, right
Speaker 1: through the Earth, and in fact, billions do every single day.
Speaker 1: So being able to detect these these neutrinos that came
Speaker 1: from cosmological events would tell us more about our universe,
Speaker 1: which is why we're so interested in them. All Right,
Speaker 1: So we've already talked a little bit about how neutrinos
Speaker 1: behave They aren't affected by electrical charge, they move nearly
Speaker 1: at the speed of light. And the nice thing is
Speaker 1: is that if we detect a neutrino and we're able
Speaker 1: to observe the effects that the neutrino has had on
Speaker 1: other atomic particles, then we can draw some information about
Speaker 1: that neutrino, for example, where it may have come from
Speaker 1: and how powerful it was. And so that is why
Speaker 1: we're looking at the cosmological ones versus the ones that
Speaker 1: we would say are emanating from our son um because
Speaker 1: they are so they're they're nearly massless. They're also barely
Speaker 1: affected by gravity, so because that's one thing that things
Speaker 1: with mass do get affected by his gravity. But gravity,
Speaker 1: out of the four fundamental forces of the universe, is
Speaker 1: the weakest, right, So the only real force that tends
Speaker 1: to affect neutrinos is the weak atomic force, but that
Speaker 1: only takes effect at incredibly short distances. We're talking on
Speaker 1: the atomic scale. So this is the kind of stuff
Speaker 1: that holds atoms together. And so unless you're unless you're
Speaker 1: is close to and I forget the exact distances that
Speaker 1: we're that we're talking about here, but it's it's it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: as close as you can possibly get without being the
Speaker 1: same thing pretty much plunk is what we're talking about here. Uh,
Speaker 1: incredibly short distances. So you know, otherwise they just like
Speaker 1: I said, our fly through uh uninhibited. They just go
Speaker 1: straight in a straight line. So by seeing the direction
Speaker 1: that they traveled in through the evidence they leave, which
Speaker 1: we'll talk about in a second, then we can determine
Speaker 1: where they came from. And and if we are able
Speaker 1: to measure how much energy there was in that neutrino,
Speaker 1: then that can give us an idea of what might
Speaker 1: have eventually spawned it. For example, if we are able
Speaker 1: to see what direction it came from and we figure
Speaker 1: it was pretty powerful and we end up kind of
Speaker 1: tracing back that pathway and we see that that pathway
Speaker 1: takes it through to what used to be a supernova,
Speaker 1: you could potentially say, hey, this neutrino was uh, it
Speaker 1: came to us from that supernova. That's pretty phenomenal stuff.
Speaker 1: That means we can learn more about a thing that
Speaker 1: happens in our universe that otherwise we would never be
Speaker 1: close enough to observe. Pretty mysterious. Yeah, you know, Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: since they don't interact with matter all that much. You know,
Speaker 1: you know, there's for for about every hundred billion neutrinos
Speaker 1: that paths of the Earth, only one or so is
Speaker 1: going to interact with anything. And since it's really the
Speaker 1: interactions with stuff that we're looking for, not the neutrinos themselves,
Speaker 1: that that is part of why they are a so
Speaker 1: elusive and be so attractive as a field of scientific study.
Speaker 1: And exactly, and that's also an explanation of why the
Speaker 1: ice cube telescope is so enormous. If you were to
Speaker 1: create a human sized neutrino detector, it would take you
Speaker 1: a century before you would be likely to detect a neutrino,
Speaker 1: Whereas if you make it a cubic kilometer, you have
Speaker 1: increased your odds of that happening, uh like, quite a bit,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, yea, by more than two. So
Speaker 1: when did we first figure out that there were these things,
Speaker 1: or at least suspect that they existed that That first
Speaker 1: suspicion was in nineteen one. Um. That was theorist Wolfgang Polly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was looking at some radioactive decay equations and saw
Speaker 1: that there was some missing energy and energy k be
Speaker 1: created or destroyed. Right, So he figured there has to
Speaker 1: be something responsible for this, and and therefore there there
Speaker 1: has to be a particle that's being given off. There's
Speaker 1: some undetectable particle that is making off with some of
Speaker 1: this energy. It must be an electrically neutral right and yeah,
Speaker 1: so he figured out the basics of what must have
Speaker 1: been there, but had no way of detecting it. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know, this is again something that sounds phenomenal to me.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine coming up with this conclusion. But if
Speaker 1: you look at particle physics, this is a story that
Speaker 1: we see happen over and over again, where people see something,
Speaker 1: they theorize or hypothesize what must be happening, and then
Speaker 1: future experiments end up bearing that out right. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: the term neutrino wasn't coined until ninety four by by
Speaker 1: Enrico Fermi. Oh for me, we've talked about for me before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so neutrino is an Italian word, and I think it
Speaker 1: means enormous pasta dish, little neutral one, I think is
Speaker 1: the more common translation. Well, I was using poetic license.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, so it's you know, it was it still
Speaker 1: had not been actually seen or observed, right right, Um,
Speaker 1: but this this was just a kind of formal equation
Speaker 1: that he was using that incorporated Polly's ideas. Right, So
Speaker 1: you have to skip from nineteen thirty four all the
Speaker 1: way to nineteen fifty nine before you get to some
Speaker 1: scientists who observed a new trino, and that would be
Speaker 1: Clyde Cowen and Fred Rens, who discovered a particle that
Speaker 1: fit all the expected characteristics of what was being called
Speaker 1: the new trino. So now it was no longer hypothetical.
Speaker 1: Now they actually had a particle they could point to
Speaker 1: and say, that's it. This thing that we found in
Speaker 1: the lab, that thing is probably a neutrino UM. And
Speaker 1: specifically what they found was an electron neutrino, which is UM.
Speaker 1: And I think that we forgot to explain this part earlier.
Speaker 1: But the three different kinds of neutrinos pair with three
Speaker 1: different kinds of particles, so it's the electron neutrinos pair
Speaker 1: with electrons, right, and muon neutrinos pair with muan, so
Speaker 1: they're heavier, they have more mass. You guys tell us
Speaker 1: the tal neutrinos are a little heavier than the muans.
Speaker 1: So yeah, each new trino has a mass that is equivalent,
Speaker 1: well not not equivalent. It matches in a sense the
Speaker 1: size of the other subatomic particle, because actually a an
Speaker 1: electron new trino has less mass than an electronic way
Speaker 1: less mass, but but they scale up as the negatively
Speaker 1: charged subatomic particles scale up as well. So I don't
Speaker 1: mean to suggest that an electron and electron new trino
Speaker 1: are equivalent in the sense of mass. They are not.
Speaker 1: But now we get up to nineteen sixty two when
Speaker 1: another UH organization we're familiar with CERN along with the
Speaker 1: Brookhaven National Laboratory. Yet they independently conducted experiments and discovered
Speaker 1: a second type of neutrino, which was the muon neutrino,
Speaker 1: and it behaved differently from the electron neutrino. That's what
Speaker 1: first gave them a little bit of confusion, in fact,
Speaker 1: to a point where they would expect to observe a
Speaker 1: certain number of neutrinos coming from the Sun on any
Speaker 1: given day, and they had a certain number that they
Speaker 1: expected for electron neutrinos and a certain number for muon neutrinos,
Speaker 1: and for some reason that wasn't working out, and they
Speaker 1: could not figure out why that was, and they couldn't
Speaker 1: figure out why that was for a long time, very
Speaker 1: long time. So you have the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center,
Speaker 1: and they discovered the twel subatomic particle, which was the
Speaker 1: negatively charged sub atomic particle that's heavier than electron or muan,
Speaker 1: and that led the scientist to hypothesize that perhaps there
Speaker 1: was in fact a third type of neutrino, because there
Speaker 1: already were neutrino counterparts for the other two negative lee
Speaker 1: charged particles. So now they had the new the tow
Speaker 1: new trino um, but they could not directly observe it.
Speaker 1: And at that point they were still kind of wondering
Speaker 1: why there seems to be this new trino shortage, you know,
Speaker 1: based upon their calculations, there should be more than what
Speaker 1: they were detecting. Yeah, like like twice again as much, right,
Speaker 1: And then we get up to in nine seven, an
Speaker 1: enormous newtrino detector is built, the Cameo conde, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure I'm mispronouncing that newtrino detector. It was a large
Speaker 1: water detector, not meaning that I don't mean that it
Speaker 1: was detecting large amounts of water. I meant that it
Speaker 1: had a large amount of water and that used as
Speaker 1: the detector. Now, this water was incredibly pure and incredibly clear,
Speaker 1: so clear that sunlight could pass through it without slowing
Speaker 1: down for something like seventy meters, which is far longer
Speaker 1: than it could if it were passing through the water
Speaker 1: of say, your typical swimming pool. Yeah, in in your
Speaker 1: typical swimming pool, you might get a couple of meters
Speaker 1: if you're lucky, right, So it was very very clear,
Speaker 1: and that was important to detect these tiny little reactions
Speaker 1: that the neutrino would cause if it collided with another
Speaker 1: sub atomic particle. And it also had more than eleven
Speaker 1: thousand light collectors that were called photo multiplier tubes in
Speaker 1: the water itself, and those were what we're looking for,
Speaker 1: these these reactions that we're going to talk about in
Speaker 1: the second So that was a huge advance. It was
Speaker 1: an enormous neutrino detector, one of the largest until the
Speaker 1: ice cube one comes along. Certain starts to experiment and
Speaker 1: determine that no other types of neutrinos beyond the three
Speaker 1: types that already been identified could exist based upon what
Speaker 1: we know. So maybe one day we'll find out we're
Speaker 1: wrong about that, but based upon everything we know right now,
Speaker 1: it appears that only those three types of neutrinos, the electron, muan,
Speaker 1: and tao, are the ones that exist. UM now in
Speaker 1: two thousand one was that was when we finally solved
Speaker 1: that solar neutrino problem that we were talking about earlier.
Speaker 1: UM experiments that were conducted at the Canadian Solar Neutrino
Speaker 1: Observatory or snow UM showed because it's in Canada, there's
Speaker 1: anyway showed that it could be solved with the explanation
Speaker 1: that okay, So so even though the Sun releases only
Speaker 1: electron neutrinos, they oscillate sometimes while they travel through space
Speaker 1: to become a pretty even mix of muan, tao, and
Speaker 1: electron neutrinos, So that that explains like if they're oscillating
Speaker 1: and some of them are town neutrinos, which we have
Speaker 1: not been able to observe directly, that would that would
Speaker 1: explain the apparent shortage of neutrinos right, previous experiments. Most
Speaker 1: previous experiments were really only looking for electron neutrinos, especially
Speaker 1: coming from the Sun, and the instruments were not calibrated
Speaker 1: to be detecting Muon and tao. So, and that's because
Speaker 1: if it's if it's oscillating, it has to have mass.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things fundamental nature. Yeah, so you know,
Speaker 1: they're still really tiny. An electron neutrino would be about
Speaker 1: one one million the mass of an electron. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's incredibly that's inconceivably tiny, at least in my mind.
Speaker 1: But but something so inconceivably tiny is very important on
Speaker 1: a universal level because this could possibly explain why, uh,
Speaker 1: why the universe contains more matter than antimatter. Why we
Speaker 1: think that this could explain dark matter basically exactly. It
Speaker 1: could well, when you get to why more matter than
Speaker 1: antimatter that explained. That would explain why the universe is
Speaker 1: the way it is, because if there had been an
Speaker 1: equal amount of matter and antimatter, it would have all
Speaker 1: annihilated itself and we wouldn't have a universe, which would
Speaker 1: be terrible because that's where I keep all my stuff. Now,
Speaker 1: how do we actually create neutrinos ourselves. Well, it's mostly
Speaker 1: through particle accelerators. You know, you moved some subatomic particles
Speaker 1: fast enough and smash them to see what happens. And
Speaker 1: some of the stuff that gets spun off tends to
Speaker 1: be these other subatomic particles and energy that we would
Speaker 1: otherwise not have been able to observe, and neutrinos are
Speaker 1: one of those. Although again we don't directly observe the neutrinos,
Speaker 1: we observe the reactions that they have with other stuff, right,
Speaker 1: And these neutrinos that we can create here on Earth
Speaker 1: are much lower in energy than most of the ones
Speaker 1: that we're seeing from from from the Sun, and way
Speaker 1: lower than anything that would be produced from a cosmological event.
Speaker 1: So yeah, if you compare the neutrinos from the ones
Speaker 1: that have been detected at the ice cube detector versus
Speaker 1: the ones that have been created in the lab, it's
Speaker 1: worlds of difference. So we've got a lot more we
Speaker 1: want to talk about with the ice cube detector, including
Speaker 1: how it actually detects these new trinos, or at least
Speaker 1: the interactions and the neutrinos are having with other particles.
Speaker 1: But before we do that, let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. All right, let's get back into
Speaker 1: the discussion about as cube. What is this thing actually
Speaker 1: made of? Okay, so we've talked about there are these
Speaker 1: sensors that are buried a mile beneath the ice, but
Speaker 1: what are the sensors actually Well, first of all, I
Speaker 1: like your verbal suggestion that we are talking in fact
Speaker 1: about the rapper ice cube. Well, but what was that?
Speaker 1: Not it? Man? The second half of this episode is
Speaker 1: going to be so confusing. Okay, that the main components
Speaker 1: of of ice cube are these these digital optical modules
Speaker 1: or doms, and each one is about the size of
Speaker 1: a basketball and they are specifically looking for a very
Speaker 1: um peculiar kind of light. And I'll talk more about
Speaker 1: that in the second but you know now they are
Speaker 1: deep within the ice. That means that we can't really
Speaker 1: fix them if something goes wrong. Yeah, there's really no
Speaker 1: diving down into a mile of ice to fix the
Speaker 1: wet dom. Number four hundred and seventy three is on
Speaker 1: the fritz. C oll. We can actually we being the
Speaker 1: people who are actually working on and no, we're not
Speaker 1: giving access to this sort of thing but they can
Speaker 1: make software updates and firmware updates. Each one of those
Speaker 1: doms is wired to the headquarters, which is at the
Speaker 1: South Pole. Uh. The South Pole headquarters houses lots of
Speaker 1: different stuff, not just the ice cube project. There are
Speaker 1: other projects that are at the South Pole as well,
Speaker 1: but that's one of the ones, and they're all wired
Speaker 1: in there so that you can administer commands to the
Speaker 1: doms and update their software as needed. So there are
Speaker 1: a few of them. There's actually sixty uh doms per hole,
Speaker 1: and there are holes if we do a little bit
Speaker 1: of math, that comes up with about five thousand, one
Speaker 1: hundred sixty of these things. Uh. These holes were drilled
Speaker 1: by UM by shooting hot, pressurized water down into the ice,
Speaker 1: which then froze back over UM through a very careful
Speaker 1: engineering process, into that very clear ice that we were
Speaker 1: looking for. Right. Yeah, I'll have to, uh see if
Speaker 1: I can find some photos that we can link to,
Speaker 1: because the photos of these holes where they just they
Speaker 1: shot a picture straight down the whole after it was drilled,
Speaker 1: is vertigo inducing. It's pretty amazing stuff to be looking
Speaker 1: down a a you know, a perfect circle that goes
Speaker 1: down a mile. It reminded me very much of all
Speaker 1: the things that I didn't want to jump down into
Speaker 1: in silent hill too, that having to jump down into.
Speaker 1: Now on top of the literally on top of these
Speaker 1: five thousand one sixty doms on the surface of the
Speaker 1: ice itself are an additional three twenty four digital operating modules,
Speaker 1: and that is part of a second detector called ice top.
Speaker 1: So you have the five thousand one or sixty underneath
Speaker 1: the surface and three four on the surface, all of
Speaker 1: which are looking for these new trino interactions. Okay, so
Speaker 1: how exactly are are they looking for these interactions? All right?
Speaker 1: So when a new trino meets another sub atomic particle
Speaker 1: that really likes it's traveling at a pretty high amount
Speaker 1: of energy, uh, you tend to have a mouon emitted
Speaker 1: as part of this interaction, and it's going to be
Speaker 1: moving in the same direction as the neutrino. So, when
Speaker 1: a neutrino makes contact with a subatomic particle in the ice,
Speaker 1: within an ice molecule, uh, a muan is given off
Speaker 1: and that ends up producing something called cheren CoV radiation. Now,
Speaker 1: cheren CoV radiation is emitted whenever a particle moves through
Speaker 1: a medium faster than light. Could move through that same medium.
Speaker 1: So in this case, the neutrino is moving through that
Speaker 1: ice faster than light could travel through that ice, and
Speaker 1: it makes contact with the subatomic particle. You end up
Speaker 1: having this MoU on uh given off as a result,
Speaker 1: and you get this light blue radiation. This is typical
Speaker 1: of any kind of nuclear radioactive process. You get this
Speaker 1: blue glow as a result. So what these detectors are
Speaker 1: looking for is evidence of that blue glow, and when
Speaker 1: they detect it, they record it and then it's measured,
Speaker 1: so you can it an entire track of this through
Speaker 1: the the kilometer of ice and find out where it
Speaker 1: came from and get an idea from the intensity of
Speaker 1: the light how much energy that neutrino had. So you're
Speaker 1: looking at the direction of the light and the intensity
Speaker 1: of it to infer the information about this subatomic particle,
Speaker 1: which is awesome. I just think that's so amazing that
Speaker 1: you can learn so much from just a pattern of light.
Speaker 1: And uh, it really is a lot. It's a ton
Speaker 1: of light uh and ton of information that they are
Speaker 1: gathering each year, something like a terabyte of data per
Speaker 1: day that they're gathering. Uh. The ends up being just
Speaker 1: about a hundred gigabytes but all the time they're done
Speaker 1: with this. Yeah it's tiny, tiny, but yeah, hundred gigabytes
Speaker 1: once they filter through all the data. But uh, that's
Speaker 1: exactly what they're looking for. And that's why these detectors
Speaker 1: have to be so far underground in such dark, clear
Speaker 1: conditions for it to be able to detect this of
Speaker 1: these very small little packets of life that are just yeah,
Speaker 1: it happens in an instant and they are so faint
Speaker 1: that if it were not that dark, you would never
Speaker 1: be able to detect it. So that's the that's the
Speaker 1: whole purpose of this thing. And because neutrinos are given
Speaker 1: off by lots of stuff besides just the Sun or
Speaker 1: by particle accelerators, we can if we detect the right types,
Speaker 1: learn more about stuff like cosmic rays, gamma ray bursts,
Speaker 1: supernova um We might also be able to start to
Speaker 1: infer things about dark matter and dark energy, things that
Speaker 1: we do not We we know have to exist based
Speaker 1: upon our understanding of our universe, but we have no evidence.
Speaker 1: But again, yeah, right now, they're really just just mathematical placeholders, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: Because when I say we have no evidence for it,
Speaker 1: we have no direct evidence. We have lots of indirect
Speaker 1: evidence by the way that the universe behaves, and the
Speaker 1: way it behaves is different from how we would understand
Speaker 1: it based upon the matter and energy we are able
Speaker 1: to observe. So this might be able to give us
Speaker 1: more clues about that and learn more about our our universe.
Speaker 1: Pretty cool stuff. So, like we said, it's gathering lots
Speaker 1: of information every single day. It's already detected several interesting neutrinos.
Speaker 1: In May two thousand thirteen, they reported that they had
Speaker 1: detected twenty eight neutrinos that had higher energy levels than
Speaker 1: what they would expect from any neutrinos that would be
Speaker 1: omitted by the Sun or any other nearby system within
Speaker 1: our solar system. So it must be that these came
Speaker 1: from outside the Solar system, assuming everything else is correct,
Speaker 1: which is incredibly exciting. In fact, two of them had
Speaker 1: so much high energy that they broke all records of
Speaker 1: all neutrinos ever detected, and they got nicknames they got
Speaker 1: They were nicknamed Bertie, Bert and Ernie. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: assume one of them has an affinity for rubber duckies
Speaker 1: and the other one is a neat freak, So yeah,
Speaker 1: It's really exciting though, that these could possibly have come
Speaker 1: from outside our solar system and could be evidence for
Speaker 1: something that happened light years away, millions of years ago.
Speaker 1: That's that's incredible. So we're still waiting to hear more
Speaker 1: about that. As of the recording of this podcast, there
Speaker 1: are plenty of scientists still poring over this information. Of course,
Speaker 1: scientists are very careful before saying definitively whether or not
Speaker 1: something came from outside the solar system. That seems to
Speaker 1: be the indication, but they won't want to. I don't
Speaker 1: want to jump to conclusions. You don't want to have
Speaker 1: another Hey, the voyager left the solar system. No, wait,
Speaker 1: no it didn't. No, no, it totally did. No it didn't. Okay,
Speaker 1: it did, but it did it a year ago. We
Speaker 1: don't want another one of those, right, No, no, no.
Speaker 1: I I think it's much preferable in the scientific community
Speaker 1: to be like, we're not sure about this thing, then
Speaker 1: like we're sure. Oh we're wrong. Yeah. So this is
Speaker 1: what we call exploratory science in the sense that there's
Speaker 1: not like a specific practical application, there's no particular end goal.
Speaker 1: It's just learning for the sake of learning, which is
Speaker 1: invaluable because even though I mean there there are some
Speaker 1: philosophies that say that science needs to be goal oriented,
Speaker 1: like there needs to be an actual practical goal to
Speaker 1: whatever scientific exploration you're doing. But that kind of puts
Speaker 1: blinders on, right, because just by learning stuff, you never
Speaker 1: know what kind of useful applications can come out of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people hadn't been studying sub atomic particles, we would never
Speaker 1: have come up with transistors, right, So, yeah, you can't
Speaker 1: predict what sort of world changing discoveries can come out
Speaker 1: of exploratory science. So personally, I find this to be
Speaker 1: an absolutely fascinating use of resources to learn more about
Speaker 1: our universe, and you never know how that information is
Speaker 1: going to play out in ways that we just can't
Speaker 1: anticipate right now, right, So I think it's pretty darn awesome.
Speaker 1: But but more practically, what what exactly is it like
Speaker 1: living and working? You know the South Pole. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a great with a giant ice telescope. I have to
Speaker 1: give a shout out. The ice cube website is fantastic.
Speaker 1: It's tons of information and a lot of great video interviews.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yes, so it is highly recommended. You'll have
Speaker 1: to go and check it out. But one of the
Speaker 1: sections is about what's it like at the South Pole?
Speaker 1: So first of all, it describes what your experience would
Speaker 1: be like just to get to the South Pole. Because first,
Speaker 1: assuming you don't live in New Zealand or Australia, you've
Speaker 1: got a little bit of a trip ahead of you. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean first you need to be issued some clothing
Speaker 1: that will keep you from freezing to death. Yeah. That
Speaker 1: that you can probably pick up somewhere in New Zealand.
Speaker 1: Maybe you know, because they're the that's the only way
Speaker 1: to get from UH at least by air to the
Speaker 1: antar to the Antarctic. I mean you could go by boat,
Speaker 1: but still you would have to pick up a lot
Speaker 1: of clothing to keep you from freezing. Um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you would fly to Australia, fly to New Zealand get
Speaker 1: all this clothing because you want to keep all your
Speaker 1: fingers and toes and your nose, and I actually do.
Speaker 1: I don't want to speak for all of humanity. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's fair, that's fair, um, but so many of you
Speaker 1: would like to keep your fingers and toes. From New Zealand,
Speaker 1: you bought a military transport to the U S Station McMurdo. Oh,
Speaker 1: not just a military transport, a Lockheed Hercules, Lauren, we
Speaker 1: just talked about those, we did. Yeah, it's a Lockheed
Speaker 1: Hercules military transport that you would board. Clearly not one
Speaker 1: of the ones that the CIA is operating. Probably, yeah,
Speaker 1: question as far as you know, uh if it if
Speaker 1: it has you know, non standard Lockheed Hercules equipment on it,
Speaker 1: maybe it's one of the CIA ones. But anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that takes you to to McMurdo, which is on the
Speaker 1: coast of Antarctica, and from there you would have to
Speaker 1: wait for a while, um and get another flight out
Speaker 1: to the South Pole where you would land, walk outside
Speaker 1: and immediately shield your eyes on ski Yes, that's my
Speaker 1: favorite part. Honestly. For some reason, landing on skis just
Speaker 1: makes me incredibly happy. Yeah, this Hercules has skis instead
Speaker 1: of wheels, because you know, you can not so useful
Speaker 1: in the Antarctic. So that South Pole station has two
Speaker 1: people in it, um, only only about fifty of those
Speaker 1: would be during during the height of study. During any
Speaker 1: given year through the winter, about fifty people are are
Speaker 1: going to be stationed right right, and only a couple
Speaker 1: are there year round. Like stay for the full year
Speaker 1: and uh and so it has h it's got a
Speaker 1: couple of amenities. It's got a kitchen, it's got a gym,
Speaker 1: it's got greenhouse, dining room. Uh. So it's got actually
Speaker 1: meeting rooms and things like that. They have a lot
Speaker 1: of extracurricular activities for people, so they don't go snow crazy.
Speaker 1: Is that is that the scientific term? I would call
Speaker 1: it that. If you will watch the Shining, I would
Speaker 1: call that snow crazy. They don't want any Jack torrans
Speaker 1: is running around the South Pole, so so they don't
Speaker 1: have a lot of topiary in the greens. I'm guessing
Speaker 1: no hedge mazes over at the South Pole, but they do.
Speaker 1: They do have lots of different lectures you can attend.
Speaker 1: Apparently the people will show up and find out that
Speaker 1: they have complementary musical skills and a lot of bands
Speaker 1: end up forming at the South Pole. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of interesting stuff and there's I was.
Speaker 1: I was actually very much entertained. I love the idea
Speaker 1: one of the things that you could take classes and
Speaker 1: totally nonrelated things like lately unscientific like Scottish dance that
Speaker 1: I just love the idea of all these scientists doing
Speaker 1: a Scottish Highland dance in the South Pole. Yeah, parkas
Speaker 1: and lab coats. So it did say that things like
Speaker 1: preparing food at the South Pole is a little different
Speaker 1: from other places in the world because it can take
Speaker 1: anywhere from several hours to like a couple of weeks. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They said that if you wanted to, say, serve ice cream,
Speaker 1: you would take it out of the freezer and let's
Speaker 1: sit out for no half a day or else you
Speaker 1: would need a hack saw to uh to make us serving.
Speaker 1: So I thought that was pretty interesting too. They have
Speaker 1: lots of educational outreach programs to various high schools and
Speaker 1: colleges throughout the world, and uh, they have programs where
Speaker 1: schools can have someone talk to them about the project
Speaker 1: via webcast or even come in. Yeah. Yeah, because not
Speaker 1: that all these scientists are working at the South Pole.
Speaker 1: Some of them are working remotely. They get the data
Speaker 1: sent up to them via satellite and then they work
Speaker 1: on that. But they're still doing very important work in
Speaker 1: in the whole experiment, and they can talk at length
Speaker 1: about what it is they do and why it's important.
Speaker 1: So lots of schools if your school is interested in
Speaker 1: that sort of thing, go to the ice Cube website.
Speaker 1: You can totally check it out there. And if your
Speaker 1: school has high aspirations and and a high budget, yeah,
Speaker 1: they can actually look into paying a visit to the
Speaker 1: South Pole headquarters and finding out more about the ice
Speaker 1: Cube detector. I think paying is probably the operative word,
Speaker 1: because it is expensive to Antarctica, you know, I noticed
Speaker 1: I saw that between for an average person, if you're
Speaker 1: just talking about a tour, you're not even talking about
Speaker 1: going down to the South Pole to see the headquarters,
Speaker 1: just just to look at Antarctica, can be between four
Speaker 1: thousand and eleven thousand dollars per person, so it is
Speaker 1: a bit dear. However, I think you know, it's a
Speaker 1: once in a lifetime kind of opportunity, right except for
Speaker 1: the people who live there where it's every day. But
Speaker 1: for most of us, it's a once in a lifetime
Speaker 1: type thing. So I think it would be absolutely cool
Speaker 1: to go visit it. To bring things back around again, Lauren,
Speaker 1: you can't really start or endo tech stuff episode without
Speaker 1: having you judge me, so we have to you already,
Speaker 1: you already did that pun. You should come up with
Speaker 1: some fresh new puns. Flash freeze waters, look, stop, collaborate
Speaker 1: and listen. Ice is back with a brand new invention.
Speaker 1: Al Right, guys, that wraps up this topic. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you. It's time to go solo. No, not really,
Speaker 1: not really. Alright, guys, if you enjoyed this episode, or
Speaker 1: maybe you have something you want to add to the discussion,
Speaker 1: perhaps about particle physics, or maybe it's just that there's
Speaker 1: another related topic you've always wanted to hear about, or
Speaker 1: maybe it's something we just never ever mentioned right to us.
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