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<\/a> The Payload for Ultrahigh Energy Observations (Credit : NASA\/NASA\/Scott Battaion)<\/p>\nNeutrinos are fascinating things. They\u2019re constantly raining down on Earth from outer space, passing through matter as if it barely exists. Most of the time we don\u2019t notice them at all, they interact so weakly with ordinary matter that they can sail right through the entire planet without touching anything.<\/p>\n
But scientists believe there\u2019s a rare subset of neutrinos that are extraordinarily energetic. These would carry more energy than even the particles being smashed together at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe. Finding them would give us a window into the universe\u2019s most violent events, the places where such energetic particles could be created, like the vicinity of supermassive black holes or collisions between ultra dense neutron stars. The challenge is actually catching one and so to do that, the PUEO team came up with an ingenious solution to use the entire continent of Antarctica as a detector.<\/p>\n
The idea works because ice conducts radio waves extremely well. If one of these ultra high energy neutrinos happened to collide with an atom in Antarctica\u2019s enormous ice sheet, the impact would produce radio waves that travel through the ice and into the air above. PUEO was designed to catch those faint signals from its vantage point at the edge of space.<\/p>\n The instrument itself is remarkable with 96 ultra sensitive radio antennas arranged in concentric circles, surrounding a \u201cbrain\u201d that constantly sifts through incoming signals to identify which might be neutrinos. It\u2019s powered by solar panels and built to be significantly more sensitive than its predecessor, ANITA, thanks to advances in electronics and a clever design that combines signals from multiple antennas in real time.<\/p>\n Building PUEO was a global effort. Over five years, labs around the world built components and shipped them to Chicago for assembly. Then came the testing phase which included a trip to Texas to make sure the electronics would function in the near vacuum conditions of the stratosphere, where there\u2019s no air for cooling fans.<\/p>\n \u201cThe big challenge is that without air, you can\u2019t use fans to cool down the electronics if they get too hot,\u201d – Cosmin Deaconu, a research professor at UChicago who wrote the flight software.<\/p>\n After passing its tests, PUEO had to be taken apart again for an epic journey by road to California, by ship to Christchurch in New Zealand, and finally by air to NASA\u2019s balloon station in Antarctica. There, scientists worked quickly to reassemble it before the launch window opened. The weather needs to be not just clear, but stable all the way up through the atmosphere. And the launch window can open any time of day or night, so the team had to be constantly ready.<\/p>\n PUEO got lucky, it launched successfully on its first attempt in the early morning of December 20th. First the balloon rose, then it lifted the instrument, until the entire 700 foot long assembly was airborne. As it climbed to 120,000 feet, the solar panels extended, and additional antennas deployed below the main instrument to boost sensitivity.<\/p>\n But the launch was just the beginning. For the next three weeks, the team took shifts monitoring PUEO around the clock. The instrument was designed to function independently, but they still had to make adjustments, at one point, the payload was rotating more slowly than expected, meaning one side was getting too much sun and overheating.<\/p>\n<\/a> Superconducting quadrupole electromagnets are used to direct the beams in the Large Hadron Collider (Credit : Gamsiz)<\/p>\n