Bowen Mark. The telescope in the ice: inventing a new astronomy at the South Pole

NY: St. Martins Press, 2017. — 432 p. — ISBN 978-1137280084, 1137280085.The IceCube Observatory has been called the «weirdest» of the seven wonders of modern astronomy by Scientific American. In The Telescope in the Ice, Mark Bowen tells the amazing story of the people who built the instrument and the science involved. Located near the U.S. Amundsen-Scott Research Station at the geographic South Pole, IceCube is unlike most telescopes in that it is not designed to detect light. It employs a cubic kilometer of diamond-clear ice, more than a mile beneath the surface, to detect an elementary particle known as the neutrino. In 2010, it detected the first extraterrestrial high-energy neutrinos and thus gave birth to a new field of astronomy. IceCube is also the largest particle physics detector ever built. Its scientific goals span not only astrophysics and cosmology but also pure particle physics. And since the neutrino is one of the strangest and least understood of the known elementary particles, this is fertile ground. Neutrino physics is perhaps the most active field in particle physics today, and IceCube is at the forefront. «The Telescope in the Ice» is, ultimately, a book about people and the thrill of the chase: the struggle to understand the neutrino ever since it was «invented» by the extraordinary Wolfgang Pauli in 1930, the early researchers who helped understand it, the strange things it taught them about the nature of space and time, and the pioneers and inventors of neutrino astronomy.Introduction: Making Mistakes.
The Birth and Youth of the Neutrino.
This Crazy Child.
Infancy and Youth.
From Poltergeist to Particle.
The Dream of Neutrino Astronomy.
Wisconsin-Style Physics.
Peaceful Exploration by Interested Scientists Throughout the World.
Science at Its Best.
Touching the Mystery.
Solid-State DUMAND.
Enter Bruce.
The Crossover.
A Supernova of Science.
Doubling Down.
Glory Days.
Night on the Ice.
The First Nus.
The Peacock and Eva Events.
Y2K at Pole.
The Real Thing.
Sometimes You Get What You Ask For.
No New Starts.
The Coming of Yeck.
Failure and Success.
As Quickly as It All Began …
Crossing the Threshold.
Epilogue: The Dawn of Multi-Messenger Astronomy.
Acknowledgments.
Acronyms.
Timeline.
Notes.
References and Bibliography.
Index.
Illustrations.
Beta decay.
Muon decay.
The Markov or «plum pudding» design.
The Greisen or «shell» design.
Schematic of IceCube.
About the Author.