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Comment by mr_mitm

11 hours ago

Where else would you go look for a cubic km of ice?

Greenland, though that is probably not much better in any measurable way, when it comes to transport.

  • Greenland is much better logistically in some ways (I work on experiments both in Greenland and in Antarctica), but the ice in Greenland is unlikely to be as good for IceCube as in Antarctica, due to a presumed larger number of dust layers from dry periods in Europe.

    The US has a research station at Summit Station Greenland but compared to South Pole, it's spartan (like, the first time I went there, I slept in a tent because of lack of hard-sided berthing, but then a Polar bear came a few years later and now hard-sided berthing is required). There are longer-term plans to improve the station in Greenland but we'll see.

  • Another option that's been popular is to get it as deep underground as possible, hard rock mines with empty areas:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Neutrino_Observatory

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNO+

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-Kamiokande

    There's a weird overlap in engineering and physics disciplines between the hard engineering/business practices of the mining industry, and particle physics.