The US National Science Foundation (NSF) is hosting an announcement today to reveal exciting findings from its IceCube observatory at the South Pole.
At 11am EDT (3pm GMT) today, they’ll be streaming live from the NSF headquarters in Virginia, as scientists discuss a groundbreaking discovery in astronomy. The NSF said that the announcement concerns “multi-messenger astrophysics findings” from IceCube.
More than 20 observatories took part in the research, and leading astrophysicists from these will be present at the event. Aside from that, no other details have been revealed.
IceCube – opened in 2010 – is designed to detect neutrinos from elsewhere in the cosmos that make their way to Earth. These can come from black holes, supernovae, and other energetic events.
It uses 86 strings of detectors stretching 2.5 kilometers (1.6 miles) below the Antarctic ice to hunt for these particles. If a neutrino strikes an atom in the ice it explodes in a shower of secondary particles, detected by the observatory, which then works out where the neutrino came from.
After a few years of finding nothing, the observatory detected its first high-energy neutrinos in 2013. What has it found this time around? You’ll have to tune in below to find out.
