by Terrence Aym

Created on: December 28, 2010

The National Science Foundation has announced that the world's strangest telescope is complete. Unlike conventional optical or radio telescopes, this new observatory built at the bottom of the world will capture and analyze one of the most elusive particles in the universe: the neutrino.

Neutrinos are kicked out of the heart of stars. Scientists theorize that most—if not all—of these tiny particles were created during the first fractions of a second after the Big Bang.

Ghost particles

The properties of neutrinos are unique; they permit astronomers a glimpse deep into the workings of stars and allow them to "see" beyond the murky gases and dust clouds that drift within certain regions of space.

Neutrinos are like ghost particles; unlike other particles like protons and electrons, neutrinos hold no charge. They're detected only upon a collision with the nucleus of an atom.

Those events are rare and random. Nailing down the ghost particle takes persistence, patience and a bit of faith.

Many years after theoretical physicists first postulated the existence of the sub-atomic particle, some astronomers dismissed the idea of neutrinos as mere fantasy.

The particles rarely interact with matter and most pass through the Earth avoiding a collision with anything. According to mathematicians, billions of neutrinos could pass through a dense substance like lead with no measurable detection. In fact, if a mass of lead a light year thick was set drifting off into space, uncounted trillions of the ghostly particles would zip right through it never meeting up with any lead atom.

While the properties of neutrinos themselves are amazing, the reason research on them has intensified is because they are the one particle that holds the promise of solving the mysteries of dark matter (and perhaps dark energy, if it exists).

Only four percent of the universe is visible—the other 96 percent is "dark." No one really knows what the dark matter is, where it came from or what its properties are within the universe. Astrophysicists believe that neutrinos may help resolve those questions about dark matter.

The Ice Cube

Sunk into some of the deepest holes on the planet, the neutrino telescope is called "Ice Cube." For an astronomical device operating in the depths of the Antarctic it's an appropriate name.

Built to endure the savage South Pole winters, Ice Cube has its primary sensors buried deep under the icecap. It's assumed that the sensor arrays will be frozen for centuries.

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