Alex McColgan

speaker

29,301 appearances 104 recordings 1 series first heard Nov 2024 last heard 4d ago

Alex McColgan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 68 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 11.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

Astrum Space · What We Detected in the Strangest Quantum Experiments on Earth · 7 Sep 2026 podcast

This reservoir can scarcely be other than the subatomic energy, which, it is known, exists abundantly in all matter. voice-verified

We sometimes dream that man will one day learn how to release it and use it for his service. voice-verified

The store is well nigh inexhaustible, if only it can be tapped. voice-verified

Maybe finally, it won't be another 30 years until we find out if it can. voice-verified

If I tell you to imagine a telescope, what do you see? voice-verified

Perhaps you picture an old wooden cylinder with lenses at both ends, similar to the one that Galileo Galilei first used to gaze up at the heavens and see the moons of Jupiter. voice-verified

Or maybe your mind is constructing a cathedral-sized dome with mirrors as big as tennis courts, like the telescopes high up in the mountains of Chile and Hawaii. voice-verified

Or you could even be drifting onto visions of enormous dishes, like the infamous Arecibo telescope that once captured radio waves from across the cosmos. voice-verified

What you probably aren't imagining is a cubic kilometre of ancient ice under the surface of our planet South Pole. voice-verified

And yet, deep below the frigid landscape of Antarctica, there lies precisely this. voice-verified

A strange telescope in one of the most inhospitable environments on Earth, designed to observe not visible light, but instead one of the most unusual and elusive particles in the universe. voice-verified

I'm Alex McColgan and you're watching Astrum, and today we're joining the IceCube Observatory in its hunt for neutrinos, also known as ghost particles. voice-verified

If you stood on this icy surface, you might not be aware that some of the rarest events in the universe are being observed beneath your feet. voice-verified

Located at the most southerly human occupied base in the world, the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, IceCube makes use of the very ice in which it is built to observe high energy neutrino particles. voice-verified

But why? voice-verified

Why this extreme environment and weird design? voice-verified

because neutrinos are weird. voice-verified

Really weird. voice-verified

Neutrinos are fundamental particles, like quarks and electrons. voice-verified

Most of these neutrinos arrive at Earth from the Sun, where they are released from the nuclear fusion reactions raging inside its core. voice-verified

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