Thursday, December 22, 2022

Cool visualization


 Some members of IceCube (led by Lu Lu, at UW Madison) have created a cool new visualization for IceCube events.  It shows where the neutrinos that reach IceCube entered the Earth (only upward-going muon neutrinos are shown).  The Earth can be rotated, and it is possible to set the minimum energy.  These are mostly atmospheric neutrinos, so are distributed over the Earth, but it is still possible to see some interesting things.  

In the screen-capture above, with an energy threshold of 100 TeV, it is clear that the neutrinos are predominantly in the Southern hemisphere.   This is because, at these energies, most neutrinos are absorbed in the Earth, so, with their longer trajectories through the Earth, most Northern hemisphere neutrinos are absorbed before reaching IceCube.