All the news and science from the 2026 Nobel prizes
Summary
The Guardian’s Science Weekly covers the 2024 Nobel Prizes, starting with the Physiology or Medicine award to Carl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Jörg Nagel for their development of optogenetics, a tool that uses light to control nerve cells. The Physics prize went to Francis Halzen for the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, which detects high-energy cosmic neutrinos using a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice. Finally, the Chemistry prize honored Henri Cahn and Kenso Soai for their discoveries regarding asymmetric catalysis, which allow chemists to synthesize specific chiral molecules essential f…
Topics discussed
Introduction to Nobel Prize Week
Medicine Prize: Optogenetics winners announced
How optogenetics works and its discovery
Applications: Brain mapping and vision restoration
Future impacts: Disease models and brain interfaces
Physics Prize: IceCube neutrino detector
What are neutrinos and their history
Building the IceCube observatory in Antarctica
Detecting cosmic neutrinos and new astronomy
Promo: Radical Thinking series on fascism
Chemistry Prize: Chirality and homochirality
Why molecular handedness matters in life
The winners' discoveries in asymmetric synthesis
Industrial impact of chirality research
Credits and sign-off
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