Physics Buzz

An international team of scientists has found compelling evidence that some the tiniest, most elusive particles we know about—neutrinos—are produced by one of the brightest, most energetic events in the universe. The key to this evidence? A single neutrino, detected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory on September 22, 2017.

A recently completed neutrino detector called NOvA has an online webcam where you can watch cosmic rays collisions in near real-time. Since most of us aren't lucky enough to have a  cosmic ray detector at home , this webcam is a nice reminder of just how ubiquitous these energetic particles from the cosmos really are. Created from screenshots of the the NOνA Far Detector Event Display  The zoo of cosmic ray particles is a whole field of study unto itself with many projects trying to determine the exact composition of particles and from where they originate. But for the physicists trying to study neutrinos these cosmic rays are all just noise.

Supernovae are the swan song of giant stars. These cosmic cataclysms are tremendous explosions lasting a few weeks and bright enough to outshine entire galaxies. But the light and heat that astronomers see with telescopes is make up only about one percent of what's happening. Mostly they produce a deluge of neutrinos, the small, ghostly particles that barely interact with normal matter. This week on the Physics CentralPodcast , how neutrinos are key to unlocking the secrets of these interstellar explosions. An artist's rendering of a supernova. Image: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

San Jose, California was the place to be for science this week. The  American Association for the Advancement of Science  held its  annual meeting there, featuring talks and lectures and exhibits from across all fields of science. There was even ice cream.

There's more to the South Pole than just some ice and a pole. A lot more. In fact the bottom of the world is a veritable hot bed of international scientific experiments. Like the Askaryan Radio Array, subject of this week's podcast . The pole at the South Pole in front of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Image: NSF

We're almost done with 2012, and it's time to look back and figure out which physics stories and breakthroughs were the most important. But how should we rank importance in physics? Is the most important research the kind that influences our everyday lives? The kind that saves the most lives? Or should we give the title to the research that slowly but surely moves technology forward? In this week's podcast Mike and I try to come up with a definition of "important" when it comes to physics research, while we share some of our favorite physics stories from 2012. We cover the discovery of what is believed to be the Higg's boson ( here's our jumbo podcast about it), the room-temperature maser  (click for our podcast), the physics of spilling coffee (one of the stories covered in Mike's Ig Nobel podcast ), neutrinos encoded with information , and the physics of mosquitos in the fog . Next week we'll be back with our favorite astrophysics and astrono