Even worse, most neutrino detectors rely on being under thick masses of rock to filter out things like cosmic rays, which would otherwise completely flood the detectors.
The ice would need to be very clear, surrounded by a grid of detectors, and all of that surrounded by a minimum of several hundreds of metres of rock on all sides.
The reason it needs to be clear is the detector watches for flashes of Cherenkov radiation.
That would actually be the least of your worries. Ice is actually a pretty good insulator because it doesn't convect. Comets are giant snowballs. They regularly venture close to the sun and only lose a small percentage of their mass.
How flooded are we talking? A detector in orbit would regularly have an earth sized mass of rock between it and the sun so the difference could be teased out statistically for low values of flooded.
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Even worse, most neutrino detectors rely on being under thick masses of rock to filter out things like cosmic rays, which would otherwise completely flood the detectors.
So what you're saying is we need to capture an icy asteroid and stick a probe in it?
The ice would need to be very clear, surrounded by a grid of detectors, and all of that surrounded by a minimum of several hundreds of metres of rock on all sides.
The reason it needs to be clear is the detector watches for flashes of Cherenkov radiation.
cough .... IceCube .... cough
IceCube uses the entire earth as a shield. Basically only neutrinos going up through the detector is considered.
I guess that depends on how you define 'up' (are you looking at the entire planet or standing on the pole)
As I understand it these days they grab all samples and are now able to distinguish 'downward' coming neutrinos from cosmic rays in software
And somehow not have it melt next to the sun.
That would actually be the least of your worries. Ice is actually a pretty good insulator because it doesn't convect. Comets are giant snowballs. They regularly venture close to the sun and only lose a small percentage of their mass.
How flooded are we talking? A detector in orbit would regularly have an earth sized mass of rock between it and the sun so the difference could be teased out statistically for low values of flooded.