Antarctic telescope shows how the Earth stops high-energy particles

The IceCube Laboratory at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, in Antarctica, hosts the computers collecting raw data. Due to satellite bandwidth allocations, the first level of reconstruction and event filtering happens in near real-time in this lab. Only events selected as interesting for physics studies are sent to UW-Madison, where they are prepared for use by any member of the IceCube Collaboration. Scientists working with the world's largest particle detector, have for the first time demonstrated the Earth's ability to stop highly energetic neutrino particles. Neutrinos are high-energy subatomic particles that are formed from violent collisions like black holes. Discovered in 2015, they help researchers to study the universe indirectly and are renowned for their ability to pass through almost anything - even the Earth. About 100 trillion neutrinos pass through the human body every second.