Why neutrino astronomy won the Nobel Prize | Night Sky News October 2026

AD | Get started with Brilliant’s tutor for free at https://brilliant.org/drbecky and save 20% off an annual subscription | Welcome back to Night Sky News for October 2026 with me, astrophysicist Dr Becky Smethurst. In this episode we’re chatting about how to see the upcoming planet parade, the Nobel Prize in physics and why it went to a detection of ultra-high energy neutrinos, plus how JWST has measured the distance to the most distant fast radio burst ever found.... Papers mentioned: Caleb et al. (2026) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.01648 IceCube Collaboration (2013) - https://journals.aps.org/prl/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevLett.111.021103 Skobelzyn (1929) - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01341600 The Chime / FRB Collaboration (2023) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2106.04352 Libeskind et al. (2013) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/1305.5557 Smith et al. (2021) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2111.08007 Moskalenko et al. (2006) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0511149 Halzen & O'Murchadha (2021) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/0802.0887 Previous videos mentioned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLOFpGrnJ9o&t=1s https://youtu.be/Y81ZjpZS52c?si=XQwD_K2x1tYzDZco https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EiTby2Lku8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tecOr0Q9edM 00:00 - Introduction 01:00 - Stargazing 06:20 - ESA & IAU dark skies agreement 10:30 - Roman Space Telescope commissioning update 13:47 - Nobel Prize Physics 2026 neutrino astronomy 26:13 - Most distant fast radio burst 31:46 - Bloopers Video filmed on a Sony ⍺7 IV Video edited by Martino Gasparrini: martino.freelance@gmail.com Video produced by Marina Hui & Dr Becky Smethurst --- 📚 My book, "A Brief History of Black Holes", out NOW in hardback, paperback, e-book and audiobook (which I narrated myself!): http://lnk.to/DrBecky --- 👕 My merch, including JWST designs, are available here (with worldwide shipping!): https://dr-becky.teemill.com/ --- 🎧 Royal Astronomical Society Podcast that I co-host: podfollow.com/supermassive --- 🔔 Don't forget to subscribe and click the little bell icon to be notified when I post a new video! --- 👩🏽‍💻 I'm Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford. I love making videos about science with an unnatural level of enthusiasm. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don't know. If you've ever wondered about something in space and couldn't find an answer online - you can ask me! My day job is to do researc