China's Ambitious Pursuit of Scientific Discovery: From Deep Sea Telescopes to Desert Digging
China is constructing the world's largest underwater telescope, called TRIDENT, to detect elusive "ghost particles" known as neutrinos. The telescope will be anchored 11,500 feet beneath the surface of the Western Pacific Ocean and is expected to be completed by 2030. By slowing down neutrinos, scientists can trace their origins billions of light-years away. TRIDENT will use the Earth as a shield to detect neutrinos from all directions, enabling all-sky observation without blind spots. The detector will consist of over 24,000 optical sensors arranged in a Penrose tiling pattern and will be significantly more sensitive than the current largest neutrino detector, IceCube. A pilot project will begin in 2026, with the full detector coming online in 2030.
