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The future of particle physics is also written from the South Pole
A month ago, the Seattle Community Summer Study Workshop—July 17-26, 2022, at the University of Washington—brought together over a thousand scientists in one of the final steps of the Particle Physics Community Planning Exercise. The meetings and accompanying white papers put the cherry on top of a period of collaborative work setting a vision for…
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Are extragalactic sources of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays efficient emitters of neutrinos?
The search for the sources of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) is not a simple one. UHECRs, which are a mixture of protons and heavy nuclei, are the highest energy particles ever measured. They should produce “hotspots” of high-energy neutrinos if they interact with other particles near their point of origin. Six years ago, a first…
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Confirmation of whether galactic X-ray binaries emit high-energy neutrinos awaits IceCube-Gen2
X-ray binaries (XRB) consist of a compact object, such as a neutron star or a black hole, and a noncompact, companion star. When they are close enough, material is pulled off the star and drawn onto the compact companion, releasing intense X-rays that make them some of the most luminous sources in the sky. Microquasars,…
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IceCube Upgrade for precision neutrino physics and astrophysics kicks off
That IceCube has big plans for a larger and improved neutrino detector is not a secret. This week, the launch of the so-called IceCube Upgrade—which will deploy seven new strings at the bottom of the detector array—sets a milestone in what IceCubers have designed as an incremental extension of the Antarctic detector. The IceCube Neutrino…
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IceCube 2014 in brief
Yet another year has come to an end for IceCube with plenty of new science results, an always growing international collaboration, and plans for an update to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. In the meantime, the detector’s performance has broken still another record, and many outreach activities, including the recently launched IceCube Masterclass, accompanied this hectic…
