Saturday, December 9, 2000-20:32

Today, I started my journey to the South Pole. I left my home at 4:00 for Oakland, California Airport. I am now waiting in LAX for a plane flight to Auckland, New Zealand. My flight is scheduled to leave at 10:25 PM.

We are trying to use neutrinos to find new things. Neutrinos are almost mass-less particles that have almost no interaction with matter. Since they barely are affected by material, they penetrate vast distances in space. They can go through regions where light cannot penetrate. Unfortunately, since their interaction is so rare, we need to build a very large detector to measure them. During my journal, I will give glimpses of the science behind AMANDA and describe what I am doing in the pole. Feel free to send me questions. I will try to answer them in my daily ramblings.

First, how did I get to go the pole? Last year, my laboratory started an ambitious project. We decided to build a string of AMANDA detectors and deploy them in the ice. The new detectors, called DOM's, are sophisticated devices that can detect and digitize light from neutrino interactions. After capturing the light, each DOM sends a message to our central data acquisition system, which is several kilometers away.

Last year, the project desperately, needed more manpower. I was asked to help them. We tried to do a normally two-year project in a year. Fortunately, our team of scientists and engineers built our detectors, inserted them many kilometers deep in the South Pole ice and did successfully get them working. That year many of my group went to the Pole for the heroic installation effort. As I was only working 1/2 time on the project, I was left on the waiting list.

This year, I was elevated from the waiting list and actually will go. Our goal is to calibrate the new detectors and get more features of the DOMs, working. I, the first person this year from the Berkeley Lab group, am going to the pole to start the installation.