Why Russian scientists just deployed a giant telescope beneath Lake Baikal

[Judi Lynn]

By Stephanie Pappas - Live Science Contributor 4 hours ago



Bubbles freeze over in Lake Baikal during the winters in southern Siberia. (Image credit: Anton Petrus via Getty Images)
Russian scientists have deployed a giant telescope into the frigid depths of Lake Baikal in southern Siberia to search for the tiniest known particles in the universe.

The telescope, Baikal-GVD, is designed to search for neutrinos, which are nearly massless subatomic particles with no electrical charge. Neutrinos are everywhere, but they interact so weakly with the forces around them that they're hugely challenging to detect.

That's why scientists are looking under Lake Baikal, which, at 5,577 feet (1,700 meters) deep, is the deepest lake on Earth. Neutrino detectors are typically built underground to shield them from cosmic rays and other sources of interference. Clear freshwater and thick, protective ice cover make Lake Baikal an ideal place to search for neutrinos, researchers told the news service AFP on March 13.



The Baikal Gigaton Volume Detector (Baikal-GVD) deep underwater neutrino telescope being lowered beneath Lake Baikal in southern Siberia. (Image credit: Alexei Kushnirenko/TASS via Getty Images)

The scientists deployed the neutrino detector through the ice about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) from the lakeshore in the southern part of the lake on March 13, lowering modules made of string, glass spheres and stainless steel up to 4,300 feet (1,310 m) into the water.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/russia-deploys-underwater-telescope-lake-baikal.html?utm_source=notification

[soothsayer]

1. Pretty cool

Pardon the pun

[Wounded Bear]

2. Cool stuff! Thanks for the link! nt

[FirstLight]

3. Interesting!

Lake Tahoe and Baikal are "sister cities" and we've had some cool science exchanges over the years. I did not know it was so deep! (Tahoe is only 1600' deep)

thanks for the interesting article!