- Searching for the secrets of the Cosmos?
They're buried in the ice.
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Telescopes aren't just for making pretty pictures.
Ever since we invented the optical telescope
back in the 1600s, we've been able to expand
human perception beyond its natural boundaries,
and reshape the way we view reality.
Skip ahead about 400 years, and the Hubble Space Telescope
is still reshaping our way of looking at the universe.
For one thing, it taught us that the age of the universe
is somewhere between 13 and 14 billion years.
It also showed us the ultra deep field,
a look at the unbelievable flaming galaxies
that filled the sky one billion years
after the universe formed.
Telescopes are like keyholes through which
we see the secrets of the universe.
One of those secrets is the neutrino,
a tiny little particle.
But it's not your typical subatomic particle.
For one thing, it's formed in nuclear reactions
that happened in the core of the sun,
or more distant stars.
When its generated, it flies off
and pretty much doesn't stop.
It's not affected by magnetic fields,
it can pass straight through objects.
And scientists believe that by studying it,
we might be able to learn more about
the mysterious dark matter that makes up
a large portion of our universe.
Now scientists at the IceCube Telescope
have found a particularly interesting way
to try and study neutrinos.
They buried 5,000 optical sensors
a mile or more beneath the surface of the ice
at the south pole, rather than erecting
a telescope in an observatory.
You might say they did the polar opposite
of what you expected.
Cuz it's the south pole.
Alright, but why are they looking in the ice?
At that depth, the pressure pushes out
all the air bubbles in the ice,
making it crystal clear, so those sensors
can detect neutrino activity.
It's also really dark, a mile down from the surface.
That's important, because when a neutrino
interacts with an atom inside the ice,
it gives off a faint blue light called Cherenkov light.
Now, that interaction also produces
another subatomic particle called a Muon,
and here's where things get crazy.
The scientist can look in the direction
that muon travels, and measure the intensity
of the light given off, and work backwards
to determine the origin of that neutrino.
It's kind of like a cop determining where a shooter stood
by looking at bullet holes that are in a wall.
Now that's not the only way we're looking
at distant objects in the near future.
We're also launching the James Webb Space Telescope
sometime around 2018.
This telescope is going to carry
lots of different instruments including the Near Cam.
Now this creates something called a Coronagraph.
It's looking for faint objects in the universe,
as they pass in front of brighter objects,
you know like a planet passing in front of its star.
Then there's the NIRSPEC, which is short for spectrograph.
This creates a frequency spectrum on a detector material,
and it's sort of like a cosmic fingerprint
that's unique to that specific object.
Now scientists can look at this frequency spectrum,
and determine an objects mass, its temperature,
even its chemical composition.
It's a pretty far jump from the optical telescopes
that Galileo was using way back in the 1600s.
But the technology we use today is going to uncover
future discoveries that will continue to reshape
our view of the universe.
Who knows?
We might see the mysteries of dark matter,
or evidence of alien life,
or maybe even the next earth.
Now that leads me to a question for all of you this week.
What mysterious object out in the universe
do you think is the one we should be concentrating on first?
Let me know in the comments below.
Explain your answer.
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