Standing at the South Pole is the next-best thing to being on another planet. If you walk a few hundred yards away from the National Science Foundation’s research station, you see a featureless plain of snow and ice, most likely empty of living creatures larger than microbes for hundreds of miles.

With nothing but snow for sound waves to echo off, there’s an eerie silence. It’s easy to get lost in reverie, contemplating the stark landscape. But then I remember that I’m here for a reason: to work on what may be the world’s weirdest telescope, watching for some of nature’s most mysterious subatomic particles.

This wintry landscape is home to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. This unusual telescope is the brainchild of Francis Halzen, recipient of the 2026 Nobel Prize in physics for his work spearheading this project and discovering high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin.

I’m an astrophysicist and part of the international team of scientists who started building IceCube in 2005 and continue to operate it today. Although the detector is designed to be operated mostly remotely, some work must be done in person: maintaining and replacing electronics, installing new hardware and upgrading instruments.

Every student and scientist who comes to the South Pole feels that same sense of awe. Even when we’re analyzing data back in our offices at home, images from our time at the pole lurk in the back of our minds.

Neutrinos hint at where cosmic rays come from

Every second, more than 10,000 high-energy particles – protons and atomic nuclei – rain down from space on every square meter of the Earth’s atmosphere. Some of them carry more than a million times the energy of the protons at the most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Fortunately, the atmosphere absorbs most of them, but a few stray particles pass through your body every second.

Scientists discovered these particles, known as cosmic rays, more than a century ago.

But the magnetic fields that fill the........

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