It's a cutting-edge telescope buried a mile under the ice at the South Pole, but in many ways, the Icecube Neutrino Observatory is hardly a telescope at all. It doesn't point up at the sky; in fact, it points down, looking through the earth. It's just one of the paradoxical parts of a new field of astronomy looking at the universe by tracking the elusive “ghost particle” known as the neutrino.

Mark Bowen is a writer who calls the Northeast Kingdom home. A self-described “recovering physicist,” he joined Vermont Edition to talk about his book, "The Telescope in the Ice: Inventing a New Astronomy at the South Pole," and to explain the new field of astronomy emerging from this unique telescope.
Broadcast on Monday, June 25, 2018 at noon; rebroadcast at 7 p.m.