In our latest podcast we explore why neutrinos are the subject of so many physics Nobel prizes 🧪⚛️ ow.ly/v13350ZVW8x

In a clinical trial first, an international research team has demonstrated that optogenetic therapy is safe to use and shows potential for restoring visual function in patients with blindness due to the disorder retinitis pigmentosa. 🧪⚛️
physicsworld.com/a/optogeneti...

A new study showing how tumour cells behave when surrounded by a disordered microenvironment could help cancer researchers by providing a biophysics model describing how cancers spread within the human body. 🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/disordered...

Astronomers have discovered the fastest-known star in the Milky Way zooming around Sagittarius A* in an extremely close orbit. Observations of this star, known as S301, could shed new light on the spin of the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. 🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/fastest-st...

We've reported a lot on nuclear clocks over the years. Now, two independent groups in China and Europe have finally gone and built them. This is the culmination of >20 years of research and could herald unprecedented precision in tests of fundamental physics. physicsworld.com/a/nuclear-cl... ⚛️🧪

Researchers in the Netherlands have shown that they can turn off the dipole moment of molecules that are normally polar, drastically altering the molecules’ behaviour in low-energy collisions. 🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/collisions...

By combining architected metals with a lightweight polymer foam, researchers in Australia & France created lightweight, strong, open-cell titanium structures that can float in water. 🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/titanium-p...

A rare solo #NobelPrize in physics goes to neutrino scientist Francis Halzen “for decisive contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin”. Full coverage here: physicsworld.com/a/francis-ha... 🧪⚛️

We spoke with Francis Halzen and his colleagues then via a Google Hangout (remember those?). You can watch that conversation on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3BI...

The impressive list of #NobelPrizes in physics related to neutrinos 🧪⚛️:

1988 - discovery of muon neutrino 🚨
1995 - detection of neutrino 💡
2002 - detection of cosmic neutrinos 🎇
2015 - neutrino oscillations 🌊
2026 - discovery of high-energy cosmic neutrinos 💥

Why are there so many physics #NobelPrizes about neutrinos? "The neutrino has such peculiar properties, the fact it interacts so infrequently in material, and in this case it’s a way of bringing information about distant cosmic sources that we are unable to acquire in other ways." - Mark Pearce 🧪⚛️

This year's #NobelPrize in Physics has gone to Francis Halzen "for decisive contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin". This was our "breakthrough of the year" in 2013: physicsworld.com/a/cosmic-neu... 🧪⚛️

Bonus: the first physics #NobelPrize winner from Sweden, where this year's laureates will be announced in just a few minutes, was an engineer by the name of Gustaf Dalén. If you're not Swedish, you've probably never heard of him, so here's his story: physicsworld.com/a/the-physic... 🧪⚛️

Finally, deciding where a #NobelPrize laureate is "from" can be tricky when people, national boundaries and national identities are all in flux. Here's a story about that + the length of time it took for various countries to get their first physics Nobelist: physicsworld.com/a/how-long-d... 🧪⚛️

We've also profiled Hideki Yukawa, the first physics Nobel laureate from Japan, whose pioneering work laid the groundwork for a post-war generation of Japanese particle physicists. physicsworld.com/a/particle-p... 🧪⚛️

Next, Abdus Salam, the first physics Nobel laureate from what is now Pakistan, though he hasn't received nearly as much honour in his homeland as he has in the other places he lived: physicsworld.com/a/abdus-sala... 🧪⚛️

While we wait for this year's #NobelPrize in physics, check out our coverage of notable past prizes. This year, we're telling the stories of the first physics Nobel laureates from selected countries. First up: C V Raman, the first Indian physics laureate. physicsworld.com/a/c-v-raman-... 🧪⚛️

Our feature on 50 years of Hofstadter's butterfly would be extra timely if Douglas Hofstadter himself were to win the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics (as his dad once did). You never know... 🧪⚛️

physicsworld.com/a/hofstadter...

Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel win Nobel Prize for "discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics" - a breakthrough that enables mapping of the brain in a way that we could once only dream of. 🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/inventors-...