To your right, you’ll see the concept design for KM3NeT, a device that, if built, will be at the bottom of the Mediterranean and will be the second largest structure on Earth. Why? To hunt neutrinos! In space!
Made out of towers half a mile tall, it’s necessary to build them because, basically, finding neutrinos is a real pain in astronomy’s collective butt. We know they’re out there, because when they nail charged particles, that particle coughs up a muon, which creates a flash of Cherenkov radiation, but they’re hard to track, especially extrasolar ones and sitting on the Earth’s crust.
Why underwater? The towers will be studded with photoreceptors and Cherenkov radiation is best seen through water. Also, you need to filter out all the neutrinos ramming into charged particles in our atmosphere, and a few thousand feet of water is good at that. And it can serve a dual purpose for deep sea research.
Also, we suspect so many universities and scientific ministries have signed on because it’s really freaking cool. But that doesn’t usually loosen tax purse strings.
[ via the Mediterraneans at io9 ]