AMANDA movie script

The universe is full of mysteries. Only small parts of its vast variety can be glimpsed with the human eye. Using ingenious modern detection systems, scientists can unveil new visions of the cosmos.

For some time there's been a new window into the universe that permits us to see space in a totally different light: neutrino astronomy. In Antarctica, physicists from around the world operate a new type of neutrino telescope, consisting of 670 light sensors, melted into the deep ice of the South Pole. Its name: AMANDA!

AMANDA is an array of devices for detecting muons and neutrinos. A constant rain of cosmic rays flows though the universe: light, nuclei, neutrinos, and muons.

Neutrinos are extremely small elementary particles that have an unusual feature: they rarely interact with ordinary matter. Light and nuclei are often swallowed by cosmic dust clouds, but neutrinos travel through space almost unaffected.

Trillions of trillions of neutrinos reach the earth every second. As messengers from their place of origin, they carry information from very distant galaxies, supernovae explosions and other energetic events, and undiscovered objects.

Neutrinos are unaffected as they penetrate the Earth, and they can travel right through the core of our planet.
Are they completely unaffected? Well, not quite.

A microscopic view shows how the travel of these ghost particles can sometimes be stopped: by an extremely rare collision with the nucleus of an atom.

Here is a neutrino colliding with a water molecule of the antarctic ice. This collision breaks the nucleus apart, and the neutrino converts to a muon, which is basically a heavy electron.

From the side, you can see another view of the muon's birth. This particular muon will be picked up by the detectors. Muons are able to travel several kilometers through the ice. You can recognize a muon that is traveling at nearly the speed of light by a cone of light that follows it. This cone is similar to a boat creating waves behind itself. Looking inside the light cone, you can see its structure. This light is known as Cerenkov radiation.

The muon emits very faint blue light rays outward from its sides. Taken together, all these emitted rays form a hollow cone behind the muon. In the darkness of the Antarctic ice, this glow can be detected up to 100 m away. The AMANDA detector, frozen in a depth of 1500 to 2000 m, is optimized in order to see this light. AMANDA is built out of powerful light sensors, which are packed into pressure-resistant glass spheres. Several hundred of these, attached to steel cables, have been placed more than a mile deep into the ice of the South Pole, where they watch for the faint signals from fast moving particles.

When a muon flies through the AMANDA detector, each light sensor registers the passing cone of light within one billionth of a second. The sensors convert the light into electrical signals, which travel to computers at the ice surface.

Scientists at the South Pole AMANDA center supervise the data recording and do initial analysis. Complex computer programs investigate the chronological order and intensity of the signals. From this information, scientists can calculate the most important information for any telescope: which direction the initial neutrino came from.

Several hundred neutrino reactions have been detected in trial phases. In January, 2000, scientists and engineers were able to finish the second phase of AMANDA's expansion. There are now 670 light sensors in the ice, and in a few years, a much larger telescope with 5000 light sensors will be built. This will be known as ICECUBE, as the finished detector will be a cube a kilometer on every side : the largest scientific instrument ever constructed.

What will these tiny neutrino messengers reveal ? Huge energy-jets that generate cosmic radiation? The origin of the dark matter? The birth of a supernova? Or something totally different ?

Every time that humans have built a new way to see into the heavens, they have been surprised. Nature has a great imagination. What surprises will the cosmos reveal through AMANDA and IceCube?