On Dec. 1, scientists at the National Science Foundation's Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station will participate in a live, worldwide webcast in conjunction with the World Year of Physics (WYOP).
Image: Equipment and buildings support the IceCube drilling project at NSF's Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Credit: Peter West, National Science Foundation
Web cast now live at http://beyond-einstein.web.cern.ch/beyond-einstein/
South Pole Station is the site of two major physics facilities. One detects the arrivals and trajectories of elusive subatomic particles called neutrinos to study enormously powerful astrophysical processes that occur at cosmological distances. The other examines properties of the cosmic microwave background--the faint radiation afterglow of the big bang that brought the universe into being--for clues about how the universe arrived at its present structure.
Scientists with both projects will discuss the significance of their work, which is taking place in one of Earth's most forbidding venues for astrophysics observatories, as part of a 12-hour global webcast titled "Beyond Einstein." The event is organized by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, to cap the WYOP, which ends this month.
WYOP is a celebration of physics and its importance in everyday life. It is being held this year because 2005 marks the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein's "miraculous year" in which he published three important papers describing ideas that have since influenced all of modern physics. For more information about the specifics of Einstein's landmark discoveries, see the NSF Web site's special report on the WYOP:
http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/wyop/index.jsp
The webcast will feature on-camera discussions and interviews with researchers from the IceCube collaboration, which is constructing the high-energy neutrino observatory and includes 27 universities and institutes from the United States, Germany, Sweden, Belgium, Venezuela, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. An NSF award to the University of Wisconsin-Madison will cover most of the $272 million cost of IceCube, an array of neutrino detectors that will extend over a 1 cubic-kilometer area centered 2 kilometers beneath the ice sheet at the South Pole Station.
The webcast will also feature a research team that is using extremely sensitive radio telescopes at the Pole to study minuscule but information-rich variations in the cosmic microwave background. Researchers will discuss how their work can help unlock the secrets of how the universe was formed and share insights about how dark matter and dark energy contribute to the shape and distribution of mass in the universe today.
Both scientific teams receive support from the U.S. Antarctic Program. NSF manages the Antarctic Program and coordinates all U.S. science on the southernmost continent and in the Southern Ocean.
Source: NSF
Related stories:
Unlocking the secret of the Kondo Effect
(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of scientists including researchers from the London Centre for Nanotechnology at UCL (University College London) and the IBM Almaden Research Center has forged a breakthrough in understanding an intriguing phenomenon in fundamental physics: the Kondo effect. The findings are reported online today in the scientific journal
Nature Physics.
Invisibility cloak now within sight: scientists (Update 2)
(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have for the first time engineered 3-D materials that can reverse the natural direction of visible and near-infrared light, a development that could help form the basis for higher resolution optical imaging, nanocircuits for high-powered computers, and, to the delight of science-fiction and fantasy buffs, cloaking devices that could render objects invisible to the human eye.
CERN announces start-up date for Large Hadron Collider
CERN has today announced that the first attempt to circulate a beam in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be made on 10 September. This news comes as the cool down phase of commissioning CERN's new particle accelerator reaches a successful conclusion. Television coverage of the start-up will be made available through Eurovision.
The Pole star comes to life again
(PhysOrg.com) -- The Northern Star, whose vibrations were thought to be dying away, appears to have come to life again.
Giving learning a personal touch
A learning system that adapts to the abilities and needs of students opens the way to a more personalised approach in delivering education electronically.
Giant memory thanks to tiny capacitors
German-Korean research team produces a permanent memory using a new procedure and thereby sets a memory density record.
Computer models show major climate shift as a result of closing ozone hole
A new study led by Columbia University researchers has found that the closing of the ozone hole, which is projected to occur sometime in the second half of the 21st century, may significantly affect climate change in the Southern Hemisphere, and therefore, the global climate. The study appears in the June 13th issue of
Science.
Sun goes longer than normal without producing sunspots
The sun has been laying low for the past couple of years, producing no sunspots and giving a break to satellites.
