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. Previously on Neatorama: The
Wonderful World of Big Science