Image: NSF/B. Gudbjartsson
What's worth hundreds of millions of dollars and located under thousands of feet of ice in the South Pole? No, it's not the lair of an evil scientist - rather, it's the IceCube, a wonderfully named observatory that scientists will use to search for neutrinos:
Thousands of meters below the ice near the South Pole lies one of the most unusual observatories ever constructed. The instrument's nervous system comprises 86 strands of light detectors, stretching down into the ice sheet like oversize strings of pearls. Each strand features 60 basketball-size detectors, spanning the depths from 1,450 to 2,450 meters below the surface. And the body of the observatory is the ice itself, an abundant medium with an astonishing natural clarity.
John Matson of Scientific American has the story: Link | Official IceCube website
Previously on Neatorama: The Wonderful World of Big Science