Astrocast.TV

The sub-atomic particles called neutrinos are not easy to detect because they interact with matter very weakly. Thus, neutrino telescopes are rare and found in the most unusual places, such as abandoned mines in Canada and Japan. An international group of astronomers have joined in the construction of a neutrino telescope which will be the largest yet built. The telescope array itself will be a cubic kilometer! The location is even more remote than any other neutrino telescope, being located at the South Pole! Completion of the total instrument array is not scheduled until 2011. However, a portion of the array has been completed and tested. The results from this initial test of the IceCube neutrino telescope were presented in a paper originally presented at an astronomical conference in Europe last year. These results are now available online at http://xxx.lanl.gov/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0901/0901.1049v1.pdf The article provides a good summary of the interest in neutrinos and a preliminary mapping of neutrino source locations on the celestial sphere.