Book Review — The Telescope in the Ice: Inventing a New Astronomy at the South Pole by Mark Bowen

I picked up this book because the title intrigued me. A telescope in … ICE ??

It follows the building of the IceCube Neutrino instrument in Antarctica. The instrument is buried about a mile deep in the diamond-clear ice there. It detects extraterrestrial neutrinos.

The first part of the book is about the physics. Neutrinos are fascinating sub-atomic particles - neutral in charge and can pass through almost anything. Billions pass through universe, the earth and through your body harmlessly every second. From the book -

‘Your average neutrino will pass unscathed—and therefore undetected—through a slab of lead one light year, or six trillion miles, thick’.

Occasionally they will react/collide with the ice and this is what the IceCube telescope is built to detect using the earth as a shield.

Why neutrinos ? Because it can pass through almost anything, it can reveal information about the interior of stars, supernovae, gamma ray bursts and other regions that are hidden behind inter-stellar dust and hence not accessible to normal telescopes.

The book brought to mind that science these days is not unlike a huge group enterprise spanning multiple areas of expertise (the design of the drill bit was a very important part of the project) than a lone scientist working at something.

In turns compelling, human (rivalries !), mundane (project budgets and government agencies !) the journey through the span of years it takes to build the final instrument and the failures before is like taking a seat in Antarctica and watching the action and adventure first-hand.