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May 19th, 2015 
David Schulberg 
Russian scientists have dropped their new neutrino detector to the bottom of Lake Baikal. It is hoped the telescope, the first part of a greater project, will shed light on the nature of mysterious dark matter – as well as the origins of the universe.
The new deepwater,
multi-megaton Dubna neutrino telescope was put into operation at
the bottom of Lake Baikal by scientists from the Institute for
Nuclear Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), the
Joint Institute for Nuclear Research and a number of other
research institutions.
The telescope forms the first cluster of the future neutrino
telescope named Baikal-GVD (Gigaton Volume Detector).
The Dubna cluster consists of 192 optical modules dropped to a
depth of 1.3 km.
READ MORE: ‘Baikal seriously ill’: World’s
deepest lake suffers alien algae, record water-level drop
“The telescope will have a module structure, which will be
formed from many functionally independent installations –
vertical garlands carrying optic modules,” Grigory
Domogatsky, a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of
Sciences and coordinator of the project, told Gazeta.ru.
The next stage of the project will include the successive
deployment of new clusters, which will increase the functional
volume of the neutrino telescope. By 2020, Baikal-GVD will be
comparable to the modern largest neutrino telescope, IceCube,
with 10-12 functional clusters and a total volume of 0.5 cubic
kilometers.
During the second development stage, the Baikal-GVD telescope
will be enhanced with 27 more clusters with a functional volume
of 1.5 cubic kilometers.
The new telescope is designed to study the high-energy neutrino
stream – a stream of bantam fundamental chargeless particles. The
scientists expect the neutrino telescope to engender a cascade of
charged particles in the waters of Baikal after penetrating
through the earth’s stratum.
Neutrinos
(in Italian, “little neutral ones”) are almost massless
particles that, unlike electrons, carry no electric charge.
Since they are chargeless, they rarely interact with other
particles. They are the most mysterious of the known particles
in the universe.
The irradiance created by a charged particle formed by neutrino
and moving with a speed higher than the speed of light in the
water is what the optical modules of the installation will
actually detect, the scientists say.
Neutrino detection at the bottom of Lake Baikal will help
scientists to understand the high-energy space processes as well
as the origin of the highest-energy particles ever found.
“The neutrino stream comes laden with a wealth of information
about our world, which is unique in many regards,” said
Academy member Valery Rubakov, the leading scientist of the
nuclear physics section of the RAS physical sciences division.
“These studies will be the key to understanding of early
stages of the universe’s evolution, along with the nature of the
forming of chemical elements, the evolution of stars and even
shed light on the nature of dark matter,” he added.
The project was praised by Christian Spiering, the head of the
Global Neutrino Network, who previously led scientists’
cooperative effort on the IceCube project.
“Such a telescope will become the key part of the future
international neutrino detection system, which will include
neutrino telescopes at the South Pole, in the Mediterranean Sea
and in Lake Baikal,” Spiering said. “Great scientific
discoveries await us in the depths of Lake Baikal.”
The first attempts to build neutrino telescopes were undertaken
in the 1960s. At that time they were build underground, so their
size was severely limited, while the detection of high-energy
neutrino demands the functional detection volume of 1 cubic
kilometers that is still shielded from other particles able to
influence the stringency of the research.
Later, RAS member Moisey Markov suggested building the telescopes
deep underwater so the water could act as a filter and working
substance.
The first such telescope was built in Russia in Lake Baikal in
1993 at a depth of 1.2 km. In 2008 another such telescope,
Antares, with a functional volume of 0.01 cubic meters, was built
in the Mediterranean Sea not far from the French city of Toulon.
Two smaller telescopes were also built near Sicily, Italy and
Pylos Island, Greece.
A total of 42 institute and university groups from 12 European
countries have joined together to build international neutrino
telescope KM3NeT, which will be put into operation in 2016-17 and
will be the biggest such telescope with a functional volume of
several cubic kilometers, according to the project’s website.
In the meantime, the largest modern neutrino telescope, IceCube,
with a functional volume of 1 cubic kilometer, built by
researchers from the US, Germany and Sweden, is situated in the
ice at a depth of 1.5 km to 2.5 km not far from the US
Amundsen-Scott Arctic station. It has been functioning since 2013
and has been first to detect the high-energy neutrino originated
beyond the Solar system.
View into the neutrino telescope SuperK = 1ktonne tank of pure
water, used to catch elusive neutrinos #girlswithtoyspic.twitter.com/GbWAhWNPsF
— Marieke Navin (@lisamarieke) 17
мая 2015
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Russian scientists drop new neutrino telescope into Lake Baikal
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