A House-Senate Conference Committee approved a $15 million proposal Tuesday for a study led by UW-Madison to construct a neutrino detector near Antarctica.
The grant will make UW-Madison the focal point for studying one of the most elusive particles in the universe.
\Neutrinos are the most antisocial particle we know about,"" said Robert Morse, professor of physics at UW-Madison. ""They are extremely hard to detect because they interact with nothing, and if they interact with nothing, why would they interact with your detector?""
Although they are difficult to detect, neutrinos hold vast amounts of information about the history of the universe as they travel through space.
""They are able to bring details from far off in space and from a long time ago when the universe was a more violent place,"" Morse said.
The project, called ICECUBE, has been in the works for over 10 years, when a smaller version of the project was proposed. However, according to Morse, even as researchers worked on earlier studies, they always knew it was going to take something more to work with neutrinos.
The actual detector will be a one-square-kilometer unit consisting of 80 strings, with 60 optical sensors on each string.
The $15 million will not cover the entire project. It will be used in two ways, according to Albrecht Karle, professor of physics at UW-Madison. It will be used to dig a hole large enough to drop ICECUBE deep under the ice, and to begin the design specifics. According to Morse, it will cost $250 million dollars over the next seven years.
""We're very grateful for the role that Congressman [David] Obey, [D-Wausau] and Congresswoman [Tammy] Baldwin, [D-Madison] and also Senator [Herb] Kohl, [D-Wis.] played in the effort"" to secure project funding, said Rhonda Norsetter, UW-Madison senior special assistant to the chancellor for federal relations.
