Jakarta, CNN Indonesia –
Scientist Russia inaugurate one telescope The largest underwater space in the world located inside Lake Baikal, Saturday (13/3).
The telescope will be used to peer deep into the universe from the pristine waters of Lake Baikal.
The under-lake telescope has been in construction since 2015. The purpose of the telescope was designed to observe neutrinos, the smallest particles currently known. Neutrinos are very difficult to detect and water is an effective medium for doing so.
Dubbed the Baikal-GVD, the telescope was submerged to a depth of 750-1,300 meters with a distance of about four kilometers from the edge of the lake.
Russian scientists say the telescope is the largest neutrino detector in the northern hemisphere. They said Lake Baikal, which is the largest freshwater lake in the world, is ideal for housing a floating observatory.
This floating observatory consists of strings with round glass and an accompanying stainless steel module. The module was carefully lowered into the frozen waters of Lake Baikal yesterday.
“A half-cubic-kilometer neutrino telescope is right under our feet,” Dmitry Naumov of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research told AFP while standing on the frozen surface of the lake.
In a few years the telescope will expand to a size of one cubic kilometer, said Naumov.
The Baikal telescope will rival the Ice Cube, a giant neutrino observatory buried under Antarctic ice at the US research station at the South Pole, he added.
Scientists chose Lake Baikal as the location for placing the telescopes for a number of reasons.
“Of course, Lake Baikal is the only lake where you can use a neutrino telescope because of its depth,” Bair Shoibonov of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research told AFP.
“Clean water is also important, the clarity of the water is too. And the fact that there is an ice sheet for two or two and a half months is also very important.”
The telescope is the result of the collaboration of scientists from the Czech Republic, Germany, Poland, Russia and Slovakia.
(ex)
– .
