Abstract:

The ANTARES Collaboartion was formed in 1996 with the objective of building a deep sea neutrino telescope. The first phase of the project has been to acquire the technology and experience necessary to construct such an instrument. A major aspect of this stage of the project was the choice and evaluation of the site which will be 40km south of Toulon in France. With the successful completion of this first stage, the collaboration has moved on to the construction of a detector of a size sufficient to start to observe neutrino events from outerspace: a detector with an effective area of . This detector will be a further step towards the ultimate goal of the construction of a neutrino telescope with volume . The talk will present the scientific motivation of the project, aspects of the exploration stage and the status of the construction of the detector.