QS2
Shepherd
Registered: 03-2006
Posts: 2138
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Ice Cube, worlds largest observatory in volume (Probably)
Ice Cube at 1 cubic kilometer and almost finished, is I think the largest by far, atleast I can not imagine a rival to this device. Admittedly they did cheat a bit when they needed to find something transparent and dense, also known as ice.
Basically they just went to Antarctica where there is a lot of pure ice already and dug the instrumentation in really really deeply. Still, it does have a cubic kilometer of collecting area.
Here's an illustration of it. As for why such a huge collecting volume, they're searching for particularly hard to detect particles called neutrinos. Though I imagine Reythia and David might already know all about this all... still it is a bit esoteric so I thought I'd explain a very little bit.
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6/24/2010, 6:19 pm
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Reythia
Knight of Honor
Registered: 11-2005
Posts: 1883
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Re: Ice Cube, worlds largest observatory in volume (Probably)
Very cool! I knew they were making neutrino collectors, but I'd never heard of this one. Thanks for the info!
--- -- YAR!
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6/25/2010, 3:21 pm
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