IceCube neutrino detector set to image Earth’s core

By Evan Blass | November 23, 2007

Following the Dr. Dre Medical Clinic and Eazy E Public “[censored]” Library, the final founding member of pioneering gangsta rap group NWA has at last been given his due, with scientists at the South Pole currently putting the finishing touches on an ambitious project known as the IceCube neutrino detector. Consisting of thousands of sensors that will occupy a cubic kilometer of ice upon completion, the machine is being built well below the Pole’s surface, and will be used to detect neutrinos from outer space which have been trapped below the Earth’s crust. The image that these scattered neutrinos produce over the course of a decade should result in a very accurate sillouette of the core, which will appear as a dark object within the lighter outline of the planet as a whole. Unfortunately, when contacted for comment, team member Maria Gonzalez-Garcia of Barcelona University refused to opine on the merits of the detector, instead cryptically suggesting that we check ourselves before we wreck ourselves.

[Image courtesy of UC Berkeley]

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