LZ, XENONnT and @XLZDcollab talking about dark matter in downtown Zurich!

Marie Curie (1867), Lise Meitner (1878), and C.V. Raman (1888) were all born on Nov. 7.

Read about Meitner and Otto Frisch's 1939 paper on nuclear fission in APS News: go.aps.org/4z4P0oA

#PhysicsHistory

We remember the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize, the first individual to be awarded two Nobel Prizes and still today the only individual with two Nobel Prizes in two different scientific categories: Marie Skłodowska Curie.

Curie was born #OnThisDay in 1867.

“Without understanding neutrinos, we’ll never understand the universe.”

Physics laureate Francis Halzen has laid the foundation for a new type of astronomy. His idea was to use naturally occurring ice, rather than water, to capture the secretive elementary particles called as the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, which can track neutrinos that originate in the distant cosmos.

So, why is it interesting to capture neutrinos? These elusive particles carry with them information about their sources. Since neutrinos have no electrical charge, they’re not deflected by the magnetic field between the earth and their distant cosmic sources. When these particles are detected and captured, we can learn more about where they are produced, for example the environment around a black hole. This knowledge about cosmic sources would otherwise not be accessible to us.

When a neutrino collides with an atomic nucleus, a charged particle can be produced which emits a blue light. This flash of light can be tracked by sensors in the clear glacial ice of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. The South Pole’s ice has many advantages, as it is free from various types of interference and the area is geologically stable, with no earthquakes. Still, it was not an easy project.

During the press conference, Francis Halzen commented on this:

”When I reflect on this at this moment, I have to emphasise how lucky I was. Because when we started this project, everybody realised it was a good idea, but very few thought it would work, including myself. This was kind of an adventure where success was not guaranteed. We were lucky to overcome the various challenges, partly because the talent of our collaborators and partly because of luck. It was a long journey but it finally worked.”

Learn more at nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/

Cosmic neutrinos with extremely high energies are very rare, so an enormous volume of ice is needed to observe an adequate number of collisions. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory covers an entire cubic kilometre and was finished in 2011. Researchers soon discovered the first nd, a few years later, could publish their discovery of neutrinos that must originate far outside our solar system. The search for the universe’s neutrino sources could begin in earnest.

Francis Halzen has received the 2026 #NobelPrize in Physics for his decisive contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin.

I am so happy today for Francis Halzen and for the IceCube collaboration. The Nobel Prize for Francis, for IceCube, and for high-energy neutrino astronomy is very special for me, both scientifically and personally.

An interesting result from the @lzdarkmatter experiment. With XLZD, we would expect to see many more events, should these turn out to be from dark matter interactions!

Do not miss this event :-)

New cosmic-scale gravity tests using CMB distortions across hundreds of thousands of galaxy clusters show Newton–Einstein gravity holds, tightening constraints on modified gravity and bolstering dark matter. doi.org/hbxcm5 phys.org/news/2026-04-g…

The number of grant applications is rising sharply. Our capacity for their evaluation isn’t.

ERC President Maria Leptin explains why stricter resubmission limits are being introduced for 2027 calls and what this mean for applicants.
link.europa.eu/xF7kjc

We wish you a good start in Tokyo!

The @uw_icecube observatory at the South Pole has found evidence for a break in the spectrum of cosmic neutrinos, with theoretical implications for their generation.
PRL: go.aps.org/4bLVkrs
PhysMag: go.aps.org/4dJcpoq

Our study on model-independent searches of new physics in DARWIN (now XLZD) with deep learning is published in EPJ-C, open access. Work led by Andre Scaffidi from SISSA @Sissaschool link.springer.com/article/10.114…

[Press Update] BASE experiment at CERN succeeds in transporting antimatter

Find out more: home.cern/news/press-rel…

The XENON collaboration, which usually looks for dark matter, has searched for x rays from dynamical quantum collapse models, improving previous constraints by two orders of magnitude go.aps.org/47dFiFu #OpenAccess

We searched for x-rays in XENONnT's low-energy data, as predicted from dynamical quantum collapse models, and improved upon previous constraints by up to two orders of magnitude: journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/1…

Physicists warn of catastrophic impact of UK science cuts: newscientist.com/article/251448…

♻️ ⚡ 🔋 The Swiss Confederation launches six new National Centres of Competence in Research (NCCRs). The NCCR “Separations”, which aims to accelerate research in separation sciences and technology transfer to industry, is led by our university.

go.epfl.ch/c79dce

Dark Energy Survey 6-year results: The S8 tension with CMB is still there (left plot), but still only two sigma-ish. Cosmological constant dark energy (w = -1, right plot) continues to be favored. The death of ΛCDM keeps not happening.

Dark matter is one of the biggest mysteries in physics. Join a webinar – broadcast from nearly a mile underground – to hear the latest results from the LZ #DarkMatter experiment at 10am MT on Dec. 8.

sanfordlab.org/lz-2025-result