Neutrino study ties UH to Antarctic ice depths

To devote one’s career to the study of neutrinos — those mysterious subatomic particles that scientists believe hold some of the most coveted secrets of the universe — is to accept one sobering reality: The best place to study neutrinos is perhaps the most remote and forbidding place on earth.

“Antarctica has several properties that make it really ideal for what we want do to,” said University of Hawaii physics and astronomy professor Peter Gorham in a news release last week.

Gorham has made regular visits to the southernmost continent as part of his ongoing research into high-energy neutrino astronomy. There he works with the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA), which flies over the continent in a stratospheric balloon and looks for signs of neutrinos colliding with atoms contained in the expansive ice.

Created during the big bang, neutrinos are considered fundamental parts of the universe, and through their study scientists are able to glean elusive information about the formation of the universe and the nature of nuclear reactions. The particles are so tiny that they can travel at light speed through the universe and barely interact with anything else before reaching Earth.

And that’s where Antarctica comes in.

As Gorham explained, “Ice has an amazing property in Antarctica of being almost completely clear to radio waves, that, if you flew over Antarctica with radio eyes, you could see right through the ice several miles deep into it and see the subcontinent below.”

ANITA has 48 antennas mounted on a 25-foot-tall gondola, each pointed down to capture radio waves in the Antarctic ice, which are signs of high-energy neutrino reactions.

UH is the lead institution for the NASA-funded project, an arrangement that has brought in upward of $12 million to the university. The university has also contributed to the program by building a copper-enclosed, foam-finger-filled laboratory that prevents radio echoes and can be used to test scientific equipment before transport to Antarctica.

“We’re participating in something which I think is one of the best efforts of humanity,” Gorham said.