The competition between Russia and the US has expanded to a new area: detecting the "ghosts of the universe" also known as Neutrinos, small particles that are hard to detect, but ice is an effective medium for doing so.
The US owns a similar telescope named "Ice Cube" deployed in the South Pole to detect the ghost Neutrinos. Russia has sought to enter this field by launching one of its largest space telescopes underwater to peer deep into the universe from the pristine waters of Lake Baikal.
Neutrinos are particles produced in the inner parts of the Sun, and during violent events such as starbursts that occur in the last phase of a star life (Supernova). They can penetrate everything that crosses their way without being affected. The Earth sees recurrent showers of Neutrinos that affect houses, animals, and humans. They are known as "ghost particles" because they rarely react with materials, and ice is the only mean to detect them. When they contact atoms in ice, they produce charged radiation-emitting particles that can be detected using highly sensitive digital optical modules.
Similar to the US Ice Cube telescope equipped with this highly sensitive module, a Russian telescope, which has been under construction since 2015, has been launched on March 14.
According to an AFP report, the telescope, dubbed Baikal-GVD, was submerged to a depth of 750-1,300 meters (2,500-4,300 feet). Scientists observed the modules being carefully lowered into the freezing waters through a rectangular hole in the ice. The floating observatory consists of strings with spherical glass and stainless steel modules attached to them.
The neutrino telescope measures half a cubic kilometer, and in several years, it will be expanded to measure one cubic kilometer, said Dmitry Naumov of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research.
The Baikal telescope will rival Ice Cube, a giant neutrino observatory buried under the Antarctic ice at a US research station at the South Pole, he added. Lake Baikal, the largest freshwater lake in the world, is ideal for housing the floating observatory.
"Of course, Lake Baikal is the only lake where you can deploy a neutrino telescope because of its depth," explained Bair Shoibonov of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research. "Freshwater is also important, water clarity too. And the fact that there is ice cover for two-two and a half months is also very important," he added. The telescope is the result of a collaboration between scientists from the Czech Republic, Germany, Poland, Russia, and Slovakia.
