The IceCube Neutrino Observatory, an unconventional telescope buried under the South Pole, began full operations 10 years ago on 13 May 2011. Since then, IceCube has been watching the cosmos and collecting data continuously for a decade.

The purpose of the telescope was to detect signals from passing neutrinos: mysterious, tiny, extremely lightweight particles created by some of the most energetic and distant phenomena in the cosmos. IceCube’s founders believed that studying astrophysical neutrinos would reveal hidden secrets of the universe – and they would be proven right.

Emeritus Professor Frank Close OBE has been elected Fellow of the Royal Society in recognition of his extraordinarily effective work in explaining profound concepts in physics at all levels of society including in parliament and to the general public.

Professor Close is one of 52 Fellows as well as 10 Foreign Members and one Honorary Fellow to be selected from around the globe for their exceptional contributions to science. Having studied for his DPhil at Oxford, he returned as Professor of Theoretical Physics in 2001.

As Buckingham Palace today announces the death of Prince Philip aged 99, our archivist, Professor Stephen Blundell describes a recorded visit to the Department of Physics on 4 November 1960.

‘The Clarendon archive contains several documents describing the detailed arrangements for Prince Philip’s visit to the Department of Physics, part of an Oxford day out for the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh, and in reading them one gets the sense of a different age, where protocol and deference were very much the order of the day.

The Department of Physics is sorry to announce the death of Professor David Brink FRS on 8 March 2021.

On 8 December 2016, an electron antineutrino with an energy of 6300 TeV hurtled to Earth from a cosmic accelerator. Deep inside the ice sheet at the South Pole, it smashed into an electron and produced a massive particle that quickly decayed. This interaction was captured by a kilometre-sized 'telescope' buried in the Antarctic glacier – the IceCube Neutrino Observatory.

Today, UKRI announced the launch of the Quantum Technologies for Fundamental Physics (QTFP) programme that will support scientists using quantum technology to study the universe in new ways in order to determine the nature of dark matter, detect gravitational waves and study the physics of black holes. Professor Ian Shipsey is Head of the Department of Physics at Oxford and has championed the programme since its inception:

Oxford’s Department of Physics is playing a key role in three of the seven quantum projects supported by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) including AION: a UK atom interferometer observatory and network.

Oxford’s Department of Physics is playing a key role in three of the seven quantum projects supported by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) including Quantum Sensing for the Hidden Sector (QSHS). With QSHS, we are joining forces with six other universities as well as the National Physical Laboratory on a multi-million-pound project which could open up a new frontier in physics.