Did you know when there are massive explosions in space, such as stars shredded apart by black holes, they make tiny subatomic particles called neutrinos? ARCS Illinois Scholar Scott Mackey is researching neutrinos in his Physics PhD to learn how the universe evolves.

As a PhD student in The Vieregg Lab, Mackey is a part of two projects: one involving NASA and Antarctica and the other in high-altitude mountains in Chile. The University of Chicago is leading the multi-university NASA PUEO project – Payload for Ultra High Energy Observations. “It’s a balloon experiment that will fly over Antarctica with antennas that turn the ice into a giant telescope,” he explains.

“The basic principle is subatomic particles are made in our universe’s most extreme places. Some of these particles, called neutrinos, travel through space uninterrupted until they reach Earth,” Mackey states. When the neutrinos hit certain material, such as ice, excess charges build up, which emits a radio signal. “We are trying to detect these radio signals from the particles in hopes of learning about the extreme places in the universe.”

The goal is to launch the balloon over Antarctica in 2025. Mackey’s lab is part of the NASA Pioneers in Astrophysics program, which awards support to researchers with unconventional ideas in experimental astrophysics. “We are building the experiment here in Chicago, and then NASA will help us with the final testing and putting it on the balloon for launch,” he explains.

More immediately, Mackey is heading to a mountain in the Atacama Desert of Chile, with an elevation of 17,000, feet to deploy a small telescope he has built. “This telescope will take important atmospheric data to help the observatories in Chile make extremely sensitive measurements of cosmic microwave background radiation,” he shares.

This CMB-54 project gathers ground-based information about the cosmic microwave background in Chile and the South Pole. Mackey explains: “The cosmic microwave background radiation is a signal from the sky produced in early cosmic history, not long after the Big Bang – the birth of our universe. It was discovered accidentally in 1964 by two scientists experimenting with an antenna. Since then, we’ve made great progress in measuring this signal to get clues about the early universe and how it evolved into the universe that we observe around us today.”

Mackey acknowledges that the ARCS Scholar Award has been pivotal for his research since it requires a lot of travel. “Having that extra support for trips like the one to Chile has been indispensable,” he shares. He also enjoys the community ARCS Scholars inherit with the award as well, “I have also really enjoyed being part of the community of members and scholars who share my passion for science.”