This winter warrior made the gravitational waves discovery possible
Engineer Steffen Richter wintered in the South Pole to keep the BICEP2 telescope running
FROZEN DELIVERY As the engineer in charge of maintaining the BICEP2 telescope, Steffen Richter made weekly trips to fill the telescope with helium to cool it to nearly absolute zero.
The wind chill is −80° Celsius when Steffen Richter, donning a red parka, hops on a snowmobile and heads to work. Lighting his path are the stars, a sliver of moon and the faint green glow of the aurora australis, the southern lights.
It’s the kind of day that might make him miss home — but Boston is nearly 15,000 kilometers away, and no pilot would dare fly anywhere near Richter’s location for months. Plus, the Harvard engineer has a job to do. Hitched to Richter’s snowmobile is a vat of liquid helium, the lifeblood of a telescope built at the far end of the world to detect and dissect the universe’s oldest light.