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The Milky Way and Auroras in the night sky over a building.

Date Taken:

August 13, 2017

Photograph By:

Dr. Daniel Michalik

License Type:

Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

This photo is intentionally upside-down to illustrate the South Pole at the bottom of the world and how the Earth acts as a filter for neutrinos passing through the Earth and exiting through the South Pole.

IceCube, the world’s largest neutrino detector, is located at the South Pole. The building shown in this photo is the IceCube laboratory.

Neutrinos are particles smaller than atoms that can pass through planets without touching a single atom. However, on occasion, one will smash into a water molecule – frozen in the polar ice cap. This rare event causes a faint blueish light burst (Cherenkov light) to propagate through neutrino detectors which are buried in the ice. The Earth filters out other types of particles, with only neutrinos able to pass through.

This photograph is, therefore, intentionally upside-down to illustrate how high energy neutrinos emanating from cosmic events in other parts of the universe can enter at the North Pole, travel through the Earth, and exit through the polar ice sheet at the bottom of the world, with only a few detected. Those few that can be detected are analyzed to see from which direction in the universe they originated.

To learn more, visit http://icecube.wisc.edu

Associated Keywords

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0., Creative Commons, IceCube, Milky Way, Neutrino, NSF, Research

By downloading this image, you agree to be bound by the terms and conditions of the image license.

This photo is in the public domain.

Photos whose copyright has expired or were taken by government employees as part of their job duties are considered to be in the public domain. Public domain works are not subject to copyright laws. Anyone may download these photos and use them freely, even for commercial purposes.

Attribution is not legally required for public domain photos but is strongly recommended.

This photo is covered by a Creative Commons license. Please see the Usage and Submissions page for more information. Use of this photo requires the following:

(1.) The user must give appropriate credit to the photographer and the National Science Foundation (NSF) and provide a link to the Creative Commons license. (2.) Use of the photo must be for non-commercial purposes only. (3.) No derivative works may be made with the original photo without the explicit permission of the photographer.

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