A novel telescope, buried deep in the Antarctic ice at the South Pole, has become the first instrument to detect and track high-energy neutrinos from space, setting the stage for a new field of astronomy that promises a view of some of the most distant, enigmatic and violent phenomena in the universe.
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Photos from the research team in Antarctica
Scientists with the National Science Foundation-funded AMANDA Telescope project work at this South Pole research station. (Photo: Robert Morse)
Scientists with the National Science Foundation-funded AMANDA Telescope drill deep holes such as this one in the South Pole ice, where they have deployed an array of neutrino detectors. Sunk more than 1.5 kilometers beneath the ice, the AMANDA Telescope array is designed to look down through the Earth to the sky in the Northern Hemisphere. (Photo: Robert Morse)
An optical module is prepared for its descent. The glass modules at the heart of AMANDA work like light bulbs in reverse, capturing the faint and fleeting streaks of light created when the occasional neutrino crashes into another particle such as a proton. (Photo: Robert Morse)
The photomultiplier tubes within these basketball-sized glass orbs are at the heart of the AMANDA neutrino telescope. (Photo: Jeff Miller)