Post Content
Off the coast of Sicily, there’s a massive underwater machine. It looks like a forest of floating spheres…
And on the surface, hidden in an abandoned winery, a computer watches them and waits. And in 2023, they saw something…
Something WAY smaller than an electron tore through that forest, setting off a signal nearly 30x more powerful than anything like it we’ve seen before, which means something HUGE must have happened way out in space.
This crazy experiment is not alone! Down in Antarctica, buried deep in the ice, are over 5000 more of these mysterious spheres.
Together, these two machines – called KM3net and Ice Cube – are part of a massive global effort to give us a brand new way to find and look inside the biggest, most extreme, cosmic events in our universe.
But to do it, they need to catch the most elusive particle in all of physics.
And in this episode of HUGE* If True, we’re going to show you how…
This episode was made possible by AT&T, the official connectivity partner of HUGE* If True.
Chapters:
00:00 What’s the machine hidden under the sea?
02:40 What is a neutrino?
03:24 How do we know what’s out in the universe?
06:06 How do you catch a neutrino?
08:08 Why can’t we see neutrinos?
11:42 How do you know you’ve detected a neutrino?
12:27 What’s hiding underneath Antarctica?
13:08 What have we discovered with neutrinos?
14:44 What don’t we know yet?
15:03 Why is this HUGE* If True?
15:44 🙂
You can find me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/cleoabram
On TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@cleoabram
Or on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/cleoabram
Bio:
Cleo Abram is an Emmy-nominated independent video journalist. On her show, HUGE* If True, Cleo explores complex technology topics with rigor and optimism, helping her audience understand the world around them and see positive futures they can help build. Before going independent, Cleo was a video producer for Vox. She wrote and directed the Coding and Diamonds episodes of Vox’s Netflix show, Explained. She produced videos for Vox’s popular YouTube channel, was the host and senior producer of Vox’s first ever daily show, Answered, and was co-host and producer of Vox’s YouTube Originals show, Glad You Asked.
Additional reading and watching:
– Astro[sound]bites: Episode 108: 2000 Meters under the Mediterranean: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-108-2000-meters-under-the-mediterranean/id1485957691?i=1000715791463&l=es-MX
– Dan Hooper’s Podcast “Why This Universe”: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-this-universe/id1523312400
– IceCube and KM3NeT’s YouTube channels: https://www.youtube.com/user/KM3NeTneutrino https://www.youtube.com/c/IceCubeNeutrino
– PhysicsGirl: My first science video in 3 years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3m3AMRlYfc
– Video from Space: “Highest energy neutrinos ever observed detected deep in Mediterranean Sea” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdxoVeIq31k
– TED-Ed: Why neutrinos matter – Sílvia Bravo Gallart https://youtu.be/nkydJXigkRE?si=Bi4CPBLu3pKhy39X
– KM3NeT: https://www.km3net.org/
– IceCube: https://icecube.wisc.edu/
– IceCubeGen2: https://icecube-gen2.wisc.edu/
– Cosmogenic candidate lights up KM3NeT: https://cerncourier.com/a/cosmogenic-candidate-lights-up-km3net/
– Observation of an ultra-high-energy cosmic neutrino with KM3NeT: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08543-1
– Multimessenger observations of a flaring blazar coincident with high-energy neutrino IceCube-170922A https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aat1378
Evidence for neutrino emission from the nearby active galaxy NGC 1068 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abg3395
Special thanks to:
– INFN
– Pasquale Migliozzi
– Marco Circella (for all the incredible archive from KM3NeT)
– Alin Ilioni (for 3D Models)
– Annarita Margiotta
– Tommaso Chiarusi
– Carlos Maximiliano Mollo (for the tour and all the information in Caserta!)
Vox: https://www.vox.com/authors/cleo-abram
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm10108242/
Gear I use:
Camera: Sony A7SIII
Lens: Sony 16–35 mm F2.8 GM
Audio: Sennheiser SK AVX and Zoom H4N Pro
Music: Musicbed, Tom Fox
Follow along for more episodes of HUGE* If True: https://www.youtube.com/cleoabram?sub_confirmation=1
—
Hey, welcome to the joke down low!
Are there any good jokes about sodium?
Na
Find a way to use “na” in a comment to let me know you’re a real one who made it to the end of the description 🙂 Read More Cleo Abram
