On Saturday, March 13, the world’s biggest underwater space telescope was launched. The project began in the year 2015. The telescope was made to uncover the deep secrets of Lake Baikal, a vast lake situated in south-east Siberia, Russia. The floated observatory is also situated in between this lake.
The projects main mission is to observe neutrinos. Neutrinos are similar to electrons yet quite different in mass and structure. They are one of the most abundant particles in the universe. Because of no electrical charge and a very small mass, they are difficult to detect. For this purpose, Baikal-GVD is built.
Baikal-GVD
Baikal-GVD is fully known as Gigaton Volume Detector. The deep-sea space telescope comprises a dozen clusters, each serving as an autonomous locator of high-energy neutrinos, with optical modules made of glass and stainless steel containing location tools connected by cables.
The information they gather is transmitted to the main module by means of coaxial cables and, after being digitized and timestamped, it is exchanged to a shore investigate station by an optical cable. The telescope was submerged to a profundity of 750-1,300 meters (2,500-4,300 feet), around four kilometers from the lake’s shore.
The new telescope was built in collaboration between several Russian research labs, educational institutions along with some best scientists from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Germany.
Why Lake Baikal?
This is the only deepest lake, where the existence of neutrinos increases. Even Bair Shoibonov of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research said in an interview with AFP,
“Of course, Lake Baikal is the as it were lake where you’ll be able to convey a neutrino telescope because of its profundity. Freshwater is additionally vital, water clarity as well. And the truth that there’s ice cover for two-two and a half months is additionally exceptionally important.”
“It will offer assistance researchers watch neutrinos, help space experts and astrophysicists within the investigation of the universe, and conceivably indeed make completely unused subfields of science.”
This project is way bigger than we can anticipate. The mission was ongoing since 1980 near Lake Baikal and somehow was successful too. But with time, nature evolves so did the mission did too.
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