Two and a half kilometres beneath the Antarctic ice, a cubic kilometre of frozen water has been wired with 5,160 light sensors, turning the South Pole itself into a telescope that looks down through the entire planet to catch particles arriving from the other side of the sky

Two and a half kilometres beneath the Antarctic ice, a cubic kilometre of frozen water has been wired with 5,160 light sensors, turning the South Pole itself into a telescope that looks down through the entire planet to catch particles arriving from the other side of the sky

Stand at the South Pole in midsummer and you will see a flat white plain, a scattering of buildings on stilts and not much else. There is no dome, no dish, no giant mirror. Nothing about the place says telescope. Yet under your boots, starting a mile down and running another mile below that, sits one of the strangest observatories ever built. It is made of ice, and its job is to watch the sky on the far side of the world by looking straight down…