Deep under a mountain in Italy, the dark matter experiment XENONnT has found something surprising: the faintest neutrinos ever witnessed.

Dark matter experiment catches quietest neutrinos ever measured

In its hunt for dark matter, the XENONnT experiment has detected the rare, feeble glow of neutrinos smacking into electrons

scientificamerican.com

Exciting dark matter news from @lzdarkmatter.bsky.social ! We see one event consistent with a 248 keV nuclear recoil, in tension with our background model at 2.6 sigma. Paper is now available here: lz.lbl.gov/wp-content/u... 🧪⚛️

Happy to be back in Geneva for the APPEC town meeting, which starts tomorrow morning. The meeting, attended also by colleagues from Canada, Japan and USA, aims to deliver the final input to the European Astroparticle Physics Strategy 2027–2036 indico.cern.ch/event/164860...

Here is an article in UZH News about the new XENONnT result (in German): www.news.uzh.ch/de/articles/...

Sonnenneutrinos

news.uzh.ch

XENONnT: First Measurement of Low-Energy Solar Neutrinos Scattering off Electrons scnat.ch/en/id/bA7dW

With XENONnT we observed solar pp neutrinos via neutrino-electron scattering. With an exposure of 2.46 t x y and electron recoil energies from 1 keV to 140 keV (probing neutrinos with energies down to 17 keV) the measured flux is (10.2±2.0)x10^10 cm^-2 s^-1. Read more at: arxiv.org/abs/2608.29450

Good job @xenonnt.bsky.social observing solar pp neutrinos! XLZD-collaborative watch party in Zurich :)

Tomorrow, August 31 at 4 pm CEST, the XENON Collaboration will host a live presentation about new findings from the XENONnT experiment. You can learn more at agenda.infn.it/event/53372/. Please note that registration is required for the event!

If you’re in Zurich, today I will discuss dark matter, my collaboration with an artist, and eventually my thoughts on fashion before the fashion performance at the @ethz.ch Polyterrasse. This is part of Scientifica, Switzerland’s largest science festival: scientifica.ch/event/art-x-...

Fashion Performance: Wie Forschung zu tragbaren Kleidern wird - Scientifica

Ein angenehm tragbarer Stricksweater, der auf kritische Menschenrechtsfragen hinweist? Eine luftige Jacke, deren Ursprung in der Zellbiologie liegt? Ein Pullover, der die Grundgesetzte der Astrophysik...

scientifica.ch

Will it be cloudy this evening? Either way, the view hier in A Coruña is beautiful :)

Oh the faculty meetings. “It was a power struggle, but over what?…” Page 210 in Margaret Atwood’s “Book of Lives. A Memoir of Sorts”, a book I wish would never end

Interesting pictogram at Lago di Carassina. It seems so harmless from the outside

This is a good write up of the Nature anisotropy paper debacle. But while Sawala is right that it's unfair to the referees to expect them to have caught the big "elemental" mistake in the paper, he's also being very generous - there is another important error that the referees *should* have caught.

Lee Billings@leebillings.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Now on @sciam.bsky.social: A recent paper in the high-profile journal Nature claimed what would've been an epochal revision to our understanding of the cosmos. Instead, independent follow-up work suggests the claim is wrong via a subtle-but-basic mistake. www.scientificamerican.com/article/phys...

We just ended a weeklong, very constructive XLZD collaboration meeting in the beautiful main building of the University of Zurich. This year, we also welcomed 11 new Canadian groups who joined the project, strengthening our double beta decay expertise!

Cosmic rays can be a window into exciting experiments in physics, astrophysics, and atmospheric science. Cheap, easy-to-use muon detectors are bringing cosmic-ray studies to high schools and colleges worldwide.

Interesting read: arxiv.org/abs/2605.17534

Baryon Asymmetry xkcd.com/3263/

I am "Shifter 2" this long and sunny weekend (fortunately for me. together with a nice postdoc who knows everything) and so far, Xenoscope is behaving (& I wake up several times per night to peek at the temperatures and pressures ;-)

Very happy to be back in New York and visit Columbia University for a colloquium and discussions with my XENON colleagues

🎉The 163rd NAS Annual Meeting starts today!🎉 Join us online as we welcome new members, spotlight their research, explore the future of ocean health, & celebrate scientific achievement. Follow our coverage + tune into live webcasts all weekend: www.nasonline.org/annual-meeti... #NAS163

I met a smart guy here in DC ;-)

New paper in PRC: with data from XENONnT, we measured the 214-Bi β-decay spectrum to the ground state of 214-Po, a first-forbidden non unique decay. The prediction based on the conserved vector current (CVC) hypothesis yields the best description of the data: journals.aps.org/prc/abstract...

Bartlomiej Grzywacz in Poland captured #Comet R3 PanSTARRS low above the horizon on Thursday. Thank you, Bartlomiej! ☄️🔭📸 buff.ly/ROtbCaj Have you seen #Comet R3 PanSTARRS yet? See more pics of the comet and a finder chart: buff.ly/0iBbMTv

If you're in Zurich, join us for today's physics colloquium, by Marie-Cécile Piro, on detecting the invisible! colloquium.phys.ethz.ch/programme/cu...

The black hole information paradox has puzzled researchers for a half century. Cosmologist and science communicator @clairelamman.bsky.social illustrates the paradox and its implications in a new scrollable comic. #astronomy #comic #blackholes

Black holes aren’t black

A half century after the discovery of Hawking radiation, we are still dealing with the quantum puzzle it exposed.

physicstoday.aip.org

The finer details of neutrino oscillations were outside the sensitivity of @icecubeneutrino.bsky.social—until now. The recently upgraded experiment has a new mission to determine neutrino mass ordering, one of the highest priority questions in particle physics. #physics #icecube

IceCube expands neutrino search to spot fainter signals

A major upgrade to the 15-year-old detector will aid in the study of neutrino oscillations.

physicstoday.aip.org

Preparations for the next run (with LArS, for Legend)

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...

🧪 🇨🇭 #IgNobel awards come to Switzerland as US unsafe for scientists #HoppSchwiiz www.theguardian.com/science/2026...

Ig Nobels to move awards to Europe due to concern over US travel visas

Scientific awards – which honor research that makes people laugh and then think – to move away from ‘unsafe’ US

theguardian.com

My way to work this week crossed one of my favorite parks in Tokyo ;)