Keith Smith

drkeithsmith.bsky.social

09 October 2026 16:06

Of course Francis Halzen has made many other contributions to neutrino astrophysics - the Nobel Prize was not given for these five papers alone. The committee's full reasoning is here: www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2026...

Keith Smith

drkeithsmith.bsky.social

09 October 2026 16:06

The IceCube Collaboration reported neutrinos from within the Milky Way in 2023. They detected an excess of neutrino emission along the Galactic plane, with more towards the Galactic Centre. This distribution was predicted by models of cosmic ray interactions. ☄️🔭⚛️🧪 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Keith Smith

drkeithsmith.bsky.social

09 October 2026 16:06

In 2022, the IceCube Collaboration searched for more sources of astrophysical neutrinos. They identified a nearby active galaxy as the strongest steady source in the northern sky. IceCube recorded 79 neutrinos from this galaxy, over nine years. ☄️🔭⚛️🧪 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Keith Smith

drkeithsmith.bsky.social

09 October 2026 16:06

A companion paper in the same issue of @science.org showed that the blazar had been a source of lower energy neutrinos before, including a flare of events in 2015. Together, these papers identified the first astrophysical neutrino source since Supernova 1987A. ☄️🔭⚛️🧪 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Keith Smith

drkeithsmith.bsky.social

09 October 2026 16:06

In 2017, IceCube precisely determined the direction from which a single high energy neutrino originated. They found it came from a blazar - an active galaxy with a jet from a supermassive black hole. The results were published in @science.org in 2018. ☄️🔭⚛️🧪 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...