IceCube

IceCube is a unique telescope at the South Pole. Most optical telescopes look at photons, but IceCube looks for evidence of a more mysterious particle called a neutrino. Because of this, it is referred to as a neutrino telescope or neutrino detector. Using an optical telescope to look at the Universe is like taking a photo, but looking at the Universe with a neutrino telescope is similar to taking an X-ray.

Neutrinos

Neutrinos are very small, nearly massless particles that come from a variety of sources. They come from the sun, radioactive decay, cosmic rays, and violent events in the galaxy such as exploding stars. Exploding stars, or supernovas, release very high amounts of neutrinos.

Animation of a neutrino passing through the detector.

IceCube is focused on seeing high energy neutrinos, which can help us understand where cosmic rays come from, more about gamma ray bursts and supernovae, the identity of dark matter, and the ability of neutrinos to oscillate, or change type. IceCube is a tool for exploration. Already it has changed the way we think of the Universe.
Since neutrinos have a very small mass, they are hard to detect. IceCube uses the ice at the South Pole in Antarctica to hold basketball sized detectors called digital optical modules, or DOMs. Altogether, there are over 5,000 DOMs in the ice.

South Pole Science

It may seem strange to use the ice, but there are several reasons why it is an excellent location. First, the ice is very clear. IceCube is buried very deep in the ice, about 2000 meters or 1.5 miles. At that depth, pressure has pushed all the bubbles out, which means it is easy for the DOMs to record neutrino interactions.
Second, it is very dark in the ice. This is important because when a neutrino interacts with an atom of ice, a particle called a muon is produced. The muon radiates blue light that is detected by the DOMs. The direction and intensity of the light allows us to determine where the neutrino was coming from in the Universe.
Finally, the last great thing about the ice at the South Pole is that there is a lot of it! The IceCube neutrino detector is enormous. It uses a cubic kilometer of ice and is the largest neutrino detector in the world.
IceCube Construction
scale

The detector was completed in December of 2010, thanks to the hard work of the IceCube Collaboration and drill teams. Building IceCube was a unique adventure and engineering project.
To embed DOMs in the ice, we used a special hot water drill. The drill was specially designed at the UW Physical Sciences Lab for the IceCube project as a high pressure hose that melts through the ice at astonishing speeds. Once the holes are drilled, deployment specialists carefully connect DOMs to a cable and lower them in the hole. Each hole has 60 DOMs on it, and there are 86 holes total.
IceCube has a surface component called IceTop that houses DOMs on top of the ice.
The total cost of IceCube is $271 million USD.
IceCube in Scale: The dashed lines above represent the portion of the cables that have DOMs attached
The National Science Foundation provided around $242 million for construction, and the rest was provided by our funding partners in Germany, Sweden, and Belgium.
IceCube is based on a pilot project called the Antarctic Muon and Neurino Detection Array, or AMANDA. Many people form the AMANDA project are now a part of the IceCube Collaboration. The IceCube Collaboration is responsible for development, construction, and analysis of data from the detector. Right now, the collaboration includes people from over 30 countries.