Over the weekend, Russian scientists lowered a series of detectors between 2500 and 4300 feet below the surface of Lake Baikal (via Phys.orgTogether, these sensors form the Baikal-Gigaton Volume Detector, the largest underwater space telescope in the Northern Hemisphere. It will help scientists study neutrinos. Although neutrinos are one of the most abundant particles in the universe, they are also the smallest known to man today. They can also travel great distances without coming into contact with other forms of matter. Those factors make them difficult to track down and study, but they can teach us a lot about the history of the universe.
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A joint project between Russia, Germany, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, construction on Baikal-GVD started in 2015. The actual ‘telescope’ consists of hundreds of glass and stainless steel spherical modules connected to the surface by cables. Those sensors currently cover an area of 17,657 cubic feet. Over time, the plan is to add more sensors to make the telescope even bigger.
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As for why they would put those modules underwater, it’s a useful medium for neutrino detection, and Lake Baikal has a lot of them. Located in Southern Siberia, it is one of the world’s largest and deepest freshwater lakes. It is also pristine and covered with ice for at least two months a year. There are not many places on the planet as ideal for this type of research as Lake Baikal. The only two other telescopes that match in scale are the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica and the ANTARES telescope deep underwater in the Mediterranean.