a question and answer with Dad:
Well, my dad sent me a bunch of questions in the comments to yesterday’s post. I’ll answer them here for everyone.
Dad: Why would you want to freeze 1000 gallons of water when you are sitting on a couple miles of pure ice? Is this is referred to as the Ice Top part of the Ice Cube project or is Ice top a separate project, can you clarify this for us?
Jon: Good questions. The tanks that I’m working on right now are part of the IceTop project, which is a sub-project of IceCube. IceCube will look for particles (particularly ones caused by neutrinos) in the ice below the south pole. IceTop looks for showers of particles, mostly caused by cosmic rays interacting in the upper atmosphere. Cosmic rays are usually helium or iron nuclei (atmos without electrons) given off in various cosmic phenomena (like a super-nova). Detecting these particles at the surface gives us a different set of information than when they are detected deep in the ice. Using a ratio of the signal from what we get on the surface (IceTop) and what we get deep in the ice (IceCube), we can determine the composition of the cosmic ray (as we can’t detect them directly).
By using tanks that have a known volume, sides of a known reflectivity, etc. we will be able to make precise quantitative measurements of the particles which pass through them, which helps us in our analysis.
Dad: What was the data at the Pole gathered from, what part of the project is that? How is this data gathered at the Pole different from what you have done at River Falls?
Jon: The data that I have referred to was taken from a tank that was deployed here in 2001. It has detectors in it that are similar to those that I use in the tank at River Falls. This tank and the River Falls tank are constructed similar to the tanks that we’re deploying now. Analysis of the data from these tanks will help us analyze the data from the new tanks.
Dad: What is “moving files”? Where did you move them?
Jon: I was referring to moving the 400mb (compressed) of data that I have taken from the 2001 tank. I first moved them to a computer in the lab at River Falls (because it’s fast) and from there to the FTP server at Bartol, for them to examine.
That concluded the question and answer for today. If anyone has any other questions, just put them in the comments section.
-Jonathan
December 28th, 2003 at 5:33 am
Jon,
Thanks for the answers. It clears things up like mud for me but science is not my forte. It is still interesting. Do you follow a regular work week so that Saturday and Sunday are days off? Or is there work every day to make the most of your time there. It sounds as though you aren’t missing a lot of sleep although maybe it comes in smaller chunks and at weirder times than usual. I get hungry every time I read one of your entries as the food sounds so delightful. Have you happened on an extraordinary chef or is it always like that? I suppose food is one treat they have some control over. Keep the news coming. We’re loving it! Anne
December 28th, 2003 at 6:50 am
Thanks Jon.
It may be more work for you, but it helps us, less than novices, to try to understand when you give us more information.
Has the change in weather had any effect on how you feel, think, sleep? In the book Mom is reading, the author, the doc who was flown out in the Winter, talked some about how weather conditions, particularly pressure changes, affect the ability to do many otherwise normal activities (process information, make sense out of what is seen, etc.) I suspect you have no problems with processing and making sense.:-)
Which way does a YoYo go at the bottom of the earth? Have you had to learn new ways to make it work? Enough of that foolishness!
You sure gave us a lot today. Thanks again. Now it must be time for you to catch up on some sleep before it is time to eat again. I think the antartic might be my kind of place.:-) But if the food is not “spicy” that may be a reason for me to reconsider.
Dad
December 28th, 2003 at 4:47 pm
Hmmm, looking for some spicy? When I was there I discovered a small bottle of “Dave’s Insanity Sauce” on the shelf, and Wow, it was HOT! It may still be around somewhere, since very few drops per day were ever used (except by an occasional person who’d say “ha, nothing’s too hot for me” before they’d be weeping and drinking water bottle after water bottle trying to wash it down.
Glenn
December 29th, 2003 at 4:07 am
Hi Anne,
We actually only get one day off per week, Sunday. Except for this last week, where we got Christmas eve and Christmas day off, and then our day off was moved to Monday (today). I still worked a little bit both of those days, because water doesn’t stop freezing just because it’s a holiday. I’m only here for a relatively short while. The people who are here for the whole summer, and especially those here now and for the coming winter, take the day off a bit more seriously. It’s expensive to have people down here, so we make the most of it, and are very productive.
Part of the new station is going up outside of my bedroom window, and I’m amazed how fast they are able to get things done, especially because they’re working out in the -40 degree windchills. There is really a good work ethic here.
-Jonathan