First Detection of High-Energy Astrophysical Neutrinos with IceCube

The IceCube detector at the South Pole is the world's largest neutrino telescope, instrumenting a cubic kilometre of deep clear ice. Completed in late 2010, the detector has recorded the arrival directions and energies of tens of thousands of neutrinos - mostly those produced when cosmic rays collide with the Earth's atmosphere. Here, we report on the first observation of high-energy neutrinos from beyond the Earth's atmosphere, identified using a novel method to strongly suppress atmospheric neutrinos coming downward into the detector from the southern sky, leaving a sample of neutrinos highly likely to be of astrophysical origin.