Hunting for "ghost particles": Neutrino observatory at the South Pole will be extended

For almost ten years, scientists from all over the world have been using the large-scale experiment "IceCube" to search for neutrinos in the permanent ice of the South Pole. Neutrinos are the smallest particles that reach Earth as cosmic rays. Now the participating researchers, among them Prof. Alexander Kappes from the University of Münster, are pleased about a huge upgrade of the laboratory, which should contribute to measuring the properties of neutrinos much more accurately than before. The upgrade project is expected to cost 37 million US dollars, largely provided by the US National Science Foundation. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is also funding the expansion. Research groups from nine German universities and two Helmholtz Centres specialising in astrophysics, the DESY and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), are participating in the IceCube project. Among other things, neutrinos are produced during nuclear fusion inside the sun.