Talk:3053: KM3NeT

First groan! (Not that I don't appreciate it, but definitely the most groanworthy comic in a long while...) 172.69.195.229 17:59, 19 February 2025 (UTC) For future context, this array has risen in notoriety thanks to the recent detection of the highest energy neutrino yet, but sadly I need to take this occasion to note how the deadliest thing in the strait of Sicily are not superluminal alien fish, but human traffickers moving people on botched up vessels from the north African coast for the past fifteen years, often resulting in shipwrecks in the waters right above KM3NeT. --172.70.216.67 22:39, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

I heard about this last week from a BBC Podcast (Inside Science?). The telescope is only part complete*, and consists of photo-multipliers (can detect a single photon) in glass spheres on a string rising from the sea floor to create a 3D grid (as illustrated). As the decay results in further luminescent particles the direction can be determined and the muon was travelling tangentially to the surface. *As with LIGO, the observation was made when the facility wasn't fully commissioned, so they had to carefully check for other light sources (possible joke source) that they weren't being 'swallowed' by bioluminecence? RIIW - Ponder it (talk) 08:13, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

So... excuse my naivité, but how do they, in reality, ensure bioluminescent fish are not confusing the neutrino detectors? 162.158.155.101 19:33, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

As it depends upon a 'track' of light, you can work out how likely it is that a set of bioluminescent fish happened to spontaneously 'flash' (in a line, in sequence and at a superluminal velocity for the medium) that coincidentally looks like the non-fish detection signature that they're looking for. (That and/or other factors, looking for particular wavelengths, without known bioluminescent sources, etc.) 172.69.195.229 20:54, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

They just discount anything that looks a bit fishy.172.71.178.78 09:31, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

Please,[citation needed] for "undersea life does not move at the speed of light"? It's mildly humorous, but in contrast to the mission of this site to EXPLAIN xkcd and just sheer ignorance, we do not need a cite for any life, undersea or not, travelling at less than the speed of light! Cuvtixo (talk) 21:27, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

I feel that Randall missed a chance at a "Cherenkov Angle" pun in the title text 172.70.134.237 23:40, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

Woah! Was that a Dad Joke? 162.158.168.161 11:55, 21 February 2025 (UTC)