Welcome to the Exciting World
of Deep Sea Astronomy!
High-energy cosmic neutrinos are only able to be detected by a few existing detectors hidden in what may seem bizarre places – inside mountains, underground, in solid ice, or even deep underwater!
Scientists use them to unravel the mysteries of cosmos, aiming to provide insights into the nature of dark matter, the evolution of stars and the origin of cosmic rays.
KM3NeT – an acronym of “kilometer-cubed neutrino telescope” – sits at depths of 3 to 5km in the Mediterranean and is planned to have a volume of some 5 cubic km. It consists of a number of vertical strings with spherical modules attached to them. These glass “balls” contain sensors which search for the neutrinos.
Neutrino, also known as ghost particle, is really hard to detect. In this effort, KM3NeT (neutrino telescope) is located in the deepest seas of the Mediterranean in order to screen out the other particles which reach our planet from above. However, they do not measure only neutrino events but also environmental events that constitute “noise” for the neutrino searches. These environmental events range from biological bioluminescence to acoustic signals from mammals and earthquakes.
Become a Deep Sea Explorer!
REINFORCE team developed a Zooniverse project called Deep Sea Explorers to give citizens the opportunity to contribute at the search for neutrinos. Within this project you can classify bioluminescence or/and bioacoustics signals from real scientific data, helping scientists to increase the efficiency in their neutrino detection algorithms and to better understand the unexplored deep marine environment.
If you want to learn more about the different topics behind Deep Sea Hunters in a nutshell, here are some interesting videos for you to watch:
What is a neutrino (MinutePhysics)
Cherenkov radiation: Particles Faster than the Speed of Light?
KM3NeT: The telescope built at the bottom of the sea:
KM3NeT event displays
KM3NeT deployment of the second node of ORCA detector , October 2020
Learn about bioluminescence
The otherworldly creatures in the ocean’s deepest depths
Neutrinos in 60 seconds (Fermilab)
How big is a neutrino? (Fermilab)
Learn more about KM3NeT here: https://www.km3net.org/
Zooniverse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-B8gXJyMHc
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEIfvKgMP9_XplStrBvEZEQ
Citizen Science
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7cQHSqfSzI
You don’t know what to do? Don’t worry! There is a detailed step-by-step tutorial for Deep Sea Explorers Zooniverse project which pops up after you click on the category you want to contribute to. The tutorial remains available on the right side of your screen at all times. This Project is organized in two categories, bioluminescence peak counting and bioacoustics identification.
Here you can watch again the dedicated webinar produced by the REINFORCE team regarding Deep Sea Hunters .
Discovering the unexplored deep marine environment
Summary:
The webinar aims to give an overview of the Deep Sea Hunters Large Scale Citizen Science demonstrator and how it will be implemented in order to engage citizens in the scientific research, showcasing the tasks that citizens will be asked to perform and how their input will be fundamental to explore the environment of the deep sea below 1000m depth in which humanity has little experience so far.
You will learn:
- How citizens can play an active role in the advance of ground-breaking research
- How a deep underwater neutrino telescope works
- How REINFORCE demonstrator about Deep Sea Hunters will be developed
- How the project will work to include diverse and underrepresented groups in science
Speakers:
– Paschal Coyle, CPPM, Marseille
– Gwenhael de Wasseige, APC, Paris
– Severine Martini, Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography, Marseille
– Hervé Glotin, Computer Science & Systems Lab., CNRS, Toulon – Remy Le Breton, APC, Paris
Presentations of the webinar can be found here:
https://www.reinforceeu.eu/events/webinars/discovering-unexplored-deep-marine-environment
Are you ready? Join the rest of the Deep Sea Explorers on Zooniverse here
Would you like to ask something? The REINFORCE team is at your disposal.
There is also a discussion platform on Deep Sea Explorers Zooniverse project here where you can discuss with other citizen scientists.