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One of UW-Madison’s most far-flung laboratories received $23 million in federal funding to expand its research on subatomic particles that travel through space at nearly the speed of light.

The National Science Foundation awarded the funding earlier this month for the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, an international research collaboration led by UW-Madison and located at Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica.

Buried about a mile beneath sheets of ice are more than 5,100 sensors connected by a series of 86 strings that make up the world’s largest neutrino detector.

Neutrinos, also known as “ghost particles” because they propel through the universe, were first identified beyond Earth’s galaxy in 2013 by IceCube.