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The IceCube Neutrino Detector at the South Pole Hits Paydirt

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Re: The IceCube Neutrino Detector at the South Pole Hits Paydirt

#31

Post by azernik »

cozzyd wrote: post #17
chris_mc wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just to insert a CD and press reset That may have been all he did that time, but imagine if stuff had gone sideways, he'd have to troubleshoot it from Antarctica! I thought working from home was bad...

I work on an experiment at the south pole (not IceCube). sshing into fix stuff is painful, even when the "good" satellite is up. Protip: pressing up several times and then enter is very dangerous since the command that you will actually run may not have appeared on your screen yet.

Since you're here! Is Iridium out of your price range, or does even that have latency/bandwidth issues for the kind of SSH work you're talking about?

Re: The IceCube Neutrino Detector at the South Pole Hits Paydirt

#32

Post by gattr »

If anyone's interested in other unusual (i.e. other than an optical imaging telescope) detectors, have a look at Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes [0]. More details can be found e.g. in [1].

TL;DR: how to detect a very high-energy gamma-ray photon? Either with an orbital observatory (but these have limited size); or let the photon hit upper atmosphere (at a few tens of km), create (together with some atmospheric nucleus) a fast electron-positron pair, which through additional interactions eventually causes a narrow cone of Cherenkov light to shine all the way down to the ground (having ~100 m diameter there), and then gather this light with an array of a few large reflectors. Finally, perform some tricky processing to recover the initial photon's direction and energy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IACT [2] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1510.05675

Re: The IceCube Neutrino Detector at the South Pole Hits Paydirt

#33

Post by ghaff »

dekhn wrote: post #20
chris_mc wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just to insert a CD and press reset That may have been all he did that time, but imagine if stuff had gone sideways, he'd have to troubleshoot it from Antarctica! I thought working from home was bad...

Yes, that's why he was sent. In case something went wrong, he was qualified to fix it in production. I've come to an appreciation for people who have jobs where they don't do much most of the time, but when the shit hits the fan, they do exactly what was required.

Pilots being another good example.

Years ago, I interviewed for a couple of positions with Schlumberger which, at the time, basically went out to oil wells and made various measurements. In a lot of ways, it was essentially a tech job but the reason you had engineers (assisted by techs) was that you had various training and, presumably, other background for when things went sideways.

Re: The IceCube Neutrino Detector at the South Pole Hits Paydirt

#34

Post by foobarian »

cozzyd wrote: post #17
chris_mc wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just to insert a CD and press reset That may have been all he did that time, but imagine if stuff had gone sideways, he'd have to troubleshoot it from Antarctica! I thought working from home was bad...

I work on an experiment at the south pole (not IceCube). sshing into fix stuff is painful, even when the "good" satellite is up. Protip: pressing up several times and then enter is very dangerous since the command that you will actually run may not have appeared on your screen yet.

Even on a good console I put a # at the start of the line before editing or typing it in case I accidentally hit Enter too soon.

And never ever paste commands without first trying it into a trash terminal or editor.

Re: The IceCube Neutrino Detector at the South Pole Hits Paydirt

#35

Post by cozzyd »

azernik wrote: post #31
cozzyd wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work on an experiment at the south pole (not IceCube). sshing into fix stuff is painful, even when the "good" satellite is up. Protip: pressing up several times and then enter is very dangerous since the command that you will actually run may not have appeared on your screen yet.

Since you're here! Is Iridium out of your price range, or does even that have latency/bandwidth issues for the kind of SSH work you're talking about?

iridium is available all the time but very slow and the scarce bandwidth is not prioritized for incidental ssh access. The problem is that there are a lot of people / experiments at Pole.

Re: The IceCube Neutrino Detector at the South Pole Hits Paydirt

#36

Post by throwa_way_ »

dekhn wrote: post #5

My coworker went down to the South Pole to install Debian on the IceCube cluster (funny story: it's hard to cool servers there because the air is really dry) ~14 years ago. Basically, a 48 hour trip both ways just to insert a CD and press reset. We were all jealous.

>it's hard to cool servers there because the air is really dry

Not sure how this could be the case. Dry air has higher thermal conductivity than moist air.

Re: The IceCube Neutrino Detector at the South Pole Hits Paydirt

#38

Post by jws »

throwa_way_ wrote: post #36
dekhn wrote: post #5

My coworker went down to the South Pole to install Debian on the IceCube cluster (funny story: it's hard to cool servers there because the air is really dry) ~14 years ago. Basically, a 48 hour trip both ways just to insert a CD and press reset. We were all jealous.

>it's hard to cool servers there because the air is really dry Not sure how this could be the case. Dry air has higher thermal conductivity than moist air.

Dry air also increases the probability of static damage. They probably can't use outside air exchange to cool the server room.

I imagine just circulating your nice toasty air into a larger area filled with moist humans who want to be warmer would work, but it depends on your building layout.

Re: The IceCube Neutrino Detector at the South Pole Hits Paydirt

#40

Post by dekhn »

throwa_way_ wrote: post #36
dekhn wrote: post #5

My coworker went down to the South Pole to install Debian on the IceCube cluster (funny story: it's hard to cool servers there because the air is really dry) ~14 years ago. Basically, a 48 hour trip both ways just to insert a CD and press reset. We were all jealous.

>it's hard to cool servers there because the air is really dry Not sure how this could be the case. Dry air has higher thermal conductivity than moist air.

There's a good article here: https://arstechnica.com/features/2012/04/coolest-jobs-in-tec... and a video here http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2010/07/23/the-d... but you're right, it doesn't mention the reason I give (and says now they do import some external cold air).
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