Just read the title and thought "Not now Cthulu, we've got enough going on"
Cthulu is supposed to rise and induce madness in the population, driving them towards death and destruction right? Seems like he'd be bored these days
Deep under Antarctic ice, a long-predicted cosmic whisper breaks through
21–30 of 47 posts
Re: Deep under Antarctic ice, a long-predicted cosmic whisper breaks through
#22Just read the title and thought "Not now Cthulu, we've got enough going on"
At this point I am more than willing to hear his political platform.
Re: Deep under Antarctic ice, a long-predicted cosmic whisper breaks through
#23Re: Deep under Antarctic ice, a long-predicted cosmic whisper breaks through
#24Summary for those who won't fight through four blocking pop-ups to read the article: When a high-energy particle (cosmic ray, say) hits ice, it creates an interaction cascade. (Think of what the Fly's Eye experiment sees, but in ice.) That interaction cascade creates (among other things) a radio signal. This detector is a radio detector under Antarctic ice, looking for exactly that. The point is that, if a high-energ…
Let me clarify, as someone involved in writing this paper.
This radio emisison (Askaryan emission) is the mechanism by which we hope to detect neutrinos with detectors like ARA (and also PUEO, RNO-G, etc. which I also work on :) ), but these events are actually candidate impacting cosmic rays. UHE cosmic rays (protons, and heavier nuclei) are charged particles that will start cascading in the atmosphere, but in certain near- vertical geometries, the shower is not "expended" before reaching the ice (which lies at an altitude of ~3km), so the dense shower core enters the ice, producing radio emission from the same mechanism through which we hope to detect neutrinos. While the Askaryan mechanism was detected in ice in beam line experiments and also in the atmosphere (where it is subdominant to radio emission from charged particles bending in the Earth's magnetic field), this is the first detection of the Askaryan effect in natural ice, proving that the emission matches our models. The cosmic rays themselves are not super interesting in the sense that there are other detectors that are much better at detecting cosmic rays (e.g .TA or Pierre Auger).
Re: Deep under Antarctic ice, a long-predicted cosmic whisper breaks through
#25Just read the title and thought "Not now Cthulu, we've got enough going on"
[deleted]
Re: Deep under Antarctic ice, a long-predicted cosmic whisper breaks through
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
we didn't start the fire it was always burning since the world was turning
But we definitely tried our best to extinguish it with gasoline.
To be fair, that’s the recommended way to put out an alkali metal fire. At least according to my grandfather who helped write safety regulations for nuclear subs whose reactors were cooled by liquid sodium.
Not really something I’d want to try out in practice, seems like a fire in a nuclear reactor under the ocean, where the source of the fire explodes on contact with water, is a less-than-ideal situation.
Not a bad metaphor for the times, though.
Re: Deep under Antarctic ice, a long-predicted cosmic whisper breaks through
#27like the start of a sci-fi movie
Re: Deep under Antarctic ice, a long-predicted cosmic whisper breaks through
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
But we definitely tried our best to extinguish it with gasoline.
To be fair, that’s the recommended way to put out an alkali metal fire. At least according to my grandfather who helped write safety regulations for nuclear subs whose reactors were cooled by liquid sodium. Not really something I’d want to try out in practice, seems like a fire in a nuclear reactor under the ocean, where the source of the fire explodes on contact with water, is a less-than-ideal situation. Not a bad…
That is indeed the second best way to extinguish them. The best when seeing alkali metal burning is a good pair of running shoes.
Re: Deep under Antarctic ice, a long-predicted cosmic whisper breaks through
#29Ah, I thought it would be a dark matter/energy signal...
Re: Deep under Antarctic ice, a long-predicted cosmic whisper breaks through
#30Just read the title and thought "Not now Cthulu, we've got enough going on"
At this point I am more than willing to hear his political platform.