Three stories today. The Nobel Prize in Physics went to the man who turned Antarctic ice into a telescope and caught ghost-like particles, an analysis suggests animals may have appeared some 200 million years earlier than thought, and very brief flashes of X-rays have caught the moment when nature moves energy about while spilling almost none of it.
Physics
The 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics went to Francis Halzen, who sank light detectors into the ice at the South Pole and caught neutrinos arriving from space.
A neutrino is a particle that passes through almost everything without reacting. Countless numbers are going through you as you read this. Because they hardly react they are hard to catch — but for the same reason nothing bends or blocks them on the long journey here. Where they came from stays written in their path.
Halzen's idea was to use the thick ice of Antarctica as the detector. Very rarely a neutrino strikes an atom in the ice and a faint blue flash appears. The ice is clear and dark, so that flash can be seen from far away. Holes were drilled and thousands of light detectors hung through a cubic kilometre of ice. With this observatory, called IceCube, high-energy neutrinos from violent places — exploding stars, black holes swallowing matter — were confirmed for the first time. The committee said a new kind of astronomy had been opened.
Through the eyes of the AtlasThe library piece on visible light and the electromagnetic spectrum says our eyes are a very narrow window. Widening that window with radio waves and X-rays is most of the past century of astronomy. Neutrinos do not come through the window at all; they come through the wall, and they show us places light cannot.
A word of cautionThe prize is not for discovering the neutrino but for opening a way to catch high-energy ones from space. Hundreds of people built the observatory; the prize went to one of them.
Source · NBC News
Earth
Taking the clock written in genes together with fossils and chemical traces in rock, a new analysis finds the start of animals could reach back 800 to 700 million years.
Animal fossils pour out of the rocks from about 540 million years ago. In older rock there is almost nothing one would call an animal, so animals have been thought to begin around then.
A team led by the University of Oxford put three things side by side. First they studied tiny fossils from very old rock in Mongolia under an electron microscope: the preservation was superb, yet nothing there was an animal. Second they used how far the genes of living animals have drifted apart to work out when their lines split; with older geological anchors the answer came out at 800 to 700 million years ago. Third, chemical traces left in rock gave a signal consistent with sponges living at least 650 million years ago. The point is that no fossils is not the same as nothing there.
Through the eyes of the AtlasA Map of Geological Time turns a Korean mnemonic for the periods into a board you can press. Is the space before its first square empty because nothing lived then, or because soft bodies left nothing behind? Darwin worried about this same gap in On the Origin of Species.
A word of cautionIt is not proof that animals lived 800 million years ago. The team said plainly that the starting date remains uncertain and that what has weakened is the case for a late start.
Source · ScienceDaily (University of Oxford)
Chemistry
Very brief flashes of X-rays followed the moment an electron and a proton move together, and caught the water molecules around them shifting at the same time.
When a plant makes food from light, or our cells draw energy from the oxygen we breathe, electrons change places. If an electron goes alone, charge piles up on one side and the move costs a great deal. Nature sends a proton — the core of a hydrogen atom — along with it. Travelling as a pair lets them skip the costly step in between.
Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory set out to watch that moment in a molecule built around ruthenium. Photographed with an X-ray laser that flashes for an extremely short time, the electron's move showed up together with the water molecules around the molecule rearranging themselves. The water dances too. Knowing the trick should help in building better catalysts for fuel cells and for devices that store electricity.
Through the eyes of the AtlasThe library piece "Solar Cells and Hydrogen" explains that energy is never made, only moved. When the path is rough, that much leaks away as heat. Looking at nature's shortcut took the very bright X-rays described in the piece on the synchrotron.
A word of cautionThe proton itself was not seen. X-rays show atoms rich in electrons best, so the proton's movement was inferred from the changes in the electrons and the water.
Source · ScienceDaily (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)