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Russian scientists had a weekend full of superlatives: They sank the Northern Hemisphere’s largest underwater space telescope into the world’s deepest lake, with the goal of detecting the smallest known particles.
Let’s get granular
Neutrinos are particles up to a million times smaller than electrons, created one second after the Big Bang. It’s rare for them to interact with other matter—they’re pros at social distancing—but scientists believe they could provide insight into the history of the universe.
The flip side: Neutrinos are extraordinarily hard to detect, even though they’re likely everywhere—about 300 of these relics of the Big Bang exist in every cubic centimeter, according to one theory. But neutrinos are easier to spot in water. So Lake Baikal, with its massive amounts of clear freshwater, is ideal.
When a neutrino hits the water, the telescope's surrounding light sensors pick up a photon of light. Sensor signals travel through cables to the telescope’s master module, and after being digitized and time stamped, the data is eventually sent ashore.
Big picture: Russia, Germany, Slovakia, Poland, and the Czech Republic have been working together on the “Baikal-Gigaton Volume Detector” since 2015. In the next few years, scientists will sink more sensors to boost the telescope’s search.