The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded to pioneering work on high-energy neutrinos ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
October 6, 2026—The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to a pioneer in neutrino detection. Plus, a new blind fish, and why some levels of Super Mario are unsolvable.
—Andrea Gawrylewski,
Chief Newsletter Editor
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vanbeets/Getty Images (photograph); Scientific American (composite) vanbeets/Getty Images; Scientific American
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Today, the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Francis Halzen for his pioneering work leading the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos. Scroll down to read more about this research. | 3 min read
Current standards for safety testing AI models are inadequate, some experts say. But to improve them the field must decide what counts as a passing grade—and that’s not obvious. | 3 min read
Some levels in the iconic Super Mario games are truly unsolvable according to mathematics. | 5 min read
The Draconid and Orionid meteor showers both peak this month. Here's how to see them. | 2 min read
Health influencers are promoting "poopmaxxing" as a way to optimize health (I hate the Internet sometimes). It's just a catchy term for maximizing fiber intake. Here's what the experts say. | 4 min read
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A view of the IceCube neutrino detector in Antarctica. Raffaela Busse, IceCube/NSF
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Fresh Views of the Cosmos
Today, the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Francis Halzen for his pioneering work on high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin. Halzen is a Belgian-born physicist, a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and principal investigator at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica. Neutrinos are the least understood of the 17 fundamental particles known to exist. They nearly always move through matter as if it isn’t there. So massive detectors are required to capture and study their exceedingly rare collisions with atoms.
How it works: IceCube is the world’s largest neutrino detector. Engineers built it by using hot water jets to bore giant, milelong holes vertically into the ice and then lowered strings hooked up with thousands of cameras down into the holes. When a high-energy neutrino is produced by a distant black hole and then comes streaming through Earth, it’ll very rarely hit an ice molecule and produce a flash of light that the cameras can detect.
Why it matters: IceCube gave humankind a fresh glimpse of the cosmos when it came online in 2010. Unlike most telescopes across the globe that gather starlight, this unique observatory sees the universe via ghostly messengers called neutrinos. Combining the two has improved our understanding of some of the most distant and violent physical processes in the cosmos.
From the archive: Halzen wrote about the IceCube experiment for Scientific American in 2015, a few years after the project had successfully detected two neutrinos carrying more than 1,000 times the energy of the most energetic neutrino ever produced by an accelerator on Earth. Read his account here.
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The newfound cave fish species Demogorgonichthys arcanus. Matthew L. Niemiller/UAH
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Fish from the Upside Down
In 2025, in a cramped, sprawling cave network in Alabama, a cave biologist slipped and fell into a deep pool of water, finding himself face-to-face with a fish he didn’t recognize. It had a humped back, a slightly duckbilled snout, and was so pale it looked ghostly blue in headlamp light. It looked similar to the Southern cave fish, which lives in the same habitat and is also blind. But this turned out to be a distinct species, which the researcher and his team dubbed the “demon cave fish” in a recent paper.
Why this is interesting: Genetic analyses suggest the demon cave fish and the Southern cave fish aren’t closely related—it looks like they even lost their vision because of different genetic mutations. Scientists were surprised to find two separate cave fish species living in such close quarters. Whereas other cohabitating cave fish are like neighbors, the demon and Southern cave fish are like roommates—trapped together for millions of years and potentially snacking on each other’s children.
What the experts say: The demon cave fish was found in a well-studied area that scientists visit every month, so “it’s a shock and kind of embarrassing, in a way,” that the new fish escaped notice for so long, says Matthew L. Niemiller, a cave biologist (yes, the one who slipped) at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and author of the paper reporting its discovery. The fish’s full name is Demogorgonichthys arcanus, a wink to the otherworldly creature that emerged in a secret federal lab in the Netflix series Stranger Things. —Emma Gometz, Newsletter Editor
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Can you reassemble this image of our July 1955 cover? The intact cover shows a design patterned after a coal manufacturing plant that produced coal not only as a fuel but, primarily, as a raw material for chemical products such as plastic. Also in this issue: Why the Pacific seafloor is wrinkled, how viruses mutate, and Albert Einstein’s likely final interview. Unlimited subscribers can download the full issue here.
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At this very moment, neutrinos are streaming through your body. In fact, tens of trillions of neutrinos pass through us every second, originating mostly from the sun. But because they're so tiny they rarely interact with your body tissue (or anything else). Just like electromagnetic waves outside the visible spectrum, we can't see neutrinos with our eyes. Scientists still have much to learn about these so-called ghost particles. And they'll go to the ends of the Earth to do it.
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—Andrea Gawrylewski,
Chief Newsletter Editor
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