News: 2026

Half a century ago, scientists at the University of Chicago's Enrico Fermi Institute helped invent a new way to study the universe: by treating the Big Bang itself as a laboratory to explore nature at energy scales unreachable on earth. This fall, nine of the researchers who carry that legacy forward will share what those fifty years have uncovered — from the invisible matter holding galaxies together to the gravitational ripples of colliding black holes.

The series of free public talks by UChicago scientists, “The Compton Lectures: 50 Years of Discovery,” run every Saturday from Oct. 3 through Dec. 5 at 11 a.m. in the Kersten Physics Teaching Center.

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

Breakthrough from a team led by Jacob Covey, associate professor in the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and Department of Physics, turns helium-3’s low mass into a quantum resource.