[HN Gopher] Radio pulses detected coming from ice in Antarctica
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       Radio pulses detected coming from ice in Antarctica
        
       Author : geox
       Score  : 48 points
       Date   : 2025-06-13 18:30 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.psu.edu)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.psu.edu)
        
       | nikanj wrote:
       | I bet the signal says Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!
        
       | cluckindan wrote:
       | It's just the almost-depleted ZPM at the abandoned ancient
       | outpost.
        
         | transcriptase wrote:
         | Someone found the chair...
        
       | gaborcselle wrote:
       | Key quotes:
       | 
       | "The radio waves that we detected were at really steep angles,
       | like 30 degrees below the surface of the ice," said Stephanie
       | Wissel, associate professor of physics, astronomy and
       | astrophysics who worked on the ANITA team searching for signals
       | from elusive particles called neutrinos.
       | 
       | "My guess is that some interesting radio propagation effect
       | occurs near ice and also near the horizon that I don't fully
       | understand, but we certainly explored several of those, and we
       | haven't been able to find any of those yet either," Wissel said.
       | "So, right now, it's one of these long-standing mysteries, and
       | I'm excited that when we fly PUEO, we'll have better sensitivity.
       | In principle, we should pick up more anomalies, and maybe we'll
       | actually understand what they are. We also might detect
       | neutrinos, which would in some ways be a lot more exciting."
        
         | madaxe_again wrote:
         | My read of this (I am a physicist by training) is that they're
         | possibly picking up radio emissions from triboelectric effects
         | due to the enormous shear forces in a slowly motile ice sheet
         | grinding over a quartz rich (east Antarctica has a high quartz
         | concentration) substrate.
         | 
         | We're talking about cubic kilometres of ice, moving jerkily
         | with stick-slip motion over bedrock - the potentials generated
         | would likely be in the megavolt range.
         | 
         | It would also explain the 30 degree incidence, as you'd expect
         | the signal to refract within the ice and exit at a shallow
         | angle.
         | 
         | In their shoes, I would be looking for correlation with
         | seismographic events and high res GPS ice flow monitoring, not
         | other neutrino observatories - it would seem wise to me to
         | eliminate known physical effects as causes before invoking
         | exotic matter.
        
       | nyc_data_geek1 wrote:
       | Who Goes There?
        
         | plasticchris wrote:
         | "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the
         | inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We
         | live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas
         | of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.
         | The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have
         | hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of
         | dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of
         | reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall
         | either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light
         | into the peace and safety of a new dark age."
        
           | SketchySeaBeast wrote:
           | At the Mountains of Madness would be more apropos than The
           | Call of Cthulhu.
        
       | biorach wrote:
       | The Thing!
        
       | Beijinger wrote:
       | OMFG. This must be Hitler in New Swabia
        
         | Xss3 wrote:
         | No its old zealand
        
         | mhh__ wrote:
         | he's been chilling down there, playing scrabble with tupac and
         | lord lucan
        
       | mtsolitary wrote:
       | That's where they left the Stargate!
        
         | layer8 wrote:
         | The second, older one, to be precise.
        
       | cs02rm0 wrote:
       | 4 8 15 16 23 42
        
       | yobid20 wrote:
       | Keep on the lookout for any cloaked ships and most definitely
       | dont enter any ancient looking circular chambers
        
       | alas44 wrote:
       | Echoes the beginning of this science fiction novel!
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ice_People_(Barjavel_novel...
        
       | boznz wrote:
       | I think it was a headline similar to this, and the subsequent
       | rabbit-holes I went down a few years ago that ended up as a my
       | last techno-thriller novel.
        
       | T-A wrote:
       | From 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18081920
       | 
       | That one led to some pretty wild speculation:
       | https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/27/world/neutrino-research-a...
        
       | vkaku wrote:
       | They moved the decepticons to the Antarctic ice shelves eh.
        
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       (page generated 2025-06-13 23:01 UTC)