On Saturday, Russian scientists launched one of the largest underwater space telescopes in the world to look deep into the Universe from the clean waters of Lake Baikal.
The deep underwater telescope, under construction since 2015, is designed to observe neutrinos, the smallest particles known today.
Nicknamed the Baikal-GVD, the telescope was sunk to a depth of 750-1,300 meters (2,500-4,300 feet), about four kilometers from the shore of the lake.
Baikal-GVD being lowered into the water. (Kirill Shipitsin / Sputnik Kirill Shipitsin / Sputnik / AFP)
Neutrinos are very difficult to detect, and water is an effective environment to do so.
The floating observatory consists of spherical glass strings and stainless steel modules attached to them.
On Saturday, the scientists observed the modules carefully lowered into the icy waters through a rectangular ice hole.
“A neutrino telescope measuring half a cubic kilometer is located just below our feet,” Dmitry Naumov of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research told AFP as he sat on the frozen surface of the lake.
In a few years, the telescope will be expanded to measure one cubic kilometer, Naumov said.
(Bair Shaibonov / Russian Institute for Nuclear Research / AFP)
The Baikal telescope will compete with the Ice Cube, a giant neutrino observer buried under ice in Antarctica at an American research station at the South Pole, he added.
Russian scientists say the telescope is the largest neutrino detector in the northern hemisphere, and Lake Baikal – the largest freshwater lake in the world – is ideal for housing the floating observatory.
“Of course, Lake Baikal is the only lake where you can deploy a neutrino telescope because of its depth,” Bair Shoibonov of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research told AFP.
“Fresh water is also important, the clarity of the water. And the fact that there is ice cover for two and a half months is also very important.”
The telescope is the result of a collaboration between scientists from the Czech Republic, Germany, Poland, Russia and Slovakia.
© Agence France-Presse