Groundbreaking Physics
Nikhef has always been involved in pioneering research projects and experiments, and is regularly involved in major discoveries in fundamental physics.
Research Milestones
Researchers and groups at the institute participate in groundbreaking experiments and research projects worldwide. For fifty years, these efforts have resulted in a steady stream of scientific publications and technical innovations. Nikhef has thus been involved in a series of major discoveries in the field of fundamental physics. The announcements of these breakthroughs almost always generate significant publicity for Dutch subatomic physics and for physics and science in general.
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2025 – Ultra-energetic neutrino detected
On February 12, 2025, researchers from the KM3NeT experiment which has been built on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea published in Nature the detection of the most energetic particle ever observed. It is suspected that it was a neutrino with an energy of 220 PeV, a hundred thousand times more energy than the largest accelerators on Earth can produce. The origin of the particle remains unclear. The process that gave it so much energy is also unknown. The KM3NeT detector network searches the seafloor for sources of neutrinos in the universe, and for the fundamental properties of these elusive particles themselves. Usually at much lower energies.
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2017 – Gravitational wave from neutron stars
On October 16, 2017, researchers published the first observation of a gravitational wave in combination with gamma rays from an object 135 million light-years from Earth. The signal was attributed to two neutron stars that must have collided. The combination of gravitational waves, measured by the LIGO-Virgo network, and gamma-ray astronomy, measured by satellites, marked the birth of a new field: multi-messenger astronomy. Observers from both fields alert each other when a signal is detected.
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2016 – First detection of gravitational waves
On February 11, 2016, researchers from detector facilities in the U.S. and Italy announced the first-ever detection of a gravitational wave from the universe. Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of spacetime of the universe itself, which arise when extremely compact objects such as black holes or neutron stars collide. The waves were detected using the LIGO interferometers in Washington and Louisiana in the United States, in close collaboration with the European Virgo detector in Pisa. Nikhef is one of the partners in the development of measurement techniques and the analysis of measurement signals. Since the first detection, hundreds of gravitational waves have been observed. The signals are studied to identify their sources and test theories about black holes and spacetime. In 2017, a Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to the pioneers of this detection work.
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2012 – Discovery of the Higgs boson
On July 4, 2012, researchers from the ATLAS and CMS detectors at the LHC accelerator at CERN announced the discovery of a new particle: the Higgs boson. The existence of this particle had been predicted decades earlier by theorists in a theory explaining why particles have mass. Peter Higgs, after whom it is named, was one of them. The particle found is a boson with a mass of 125 GeV, and is an extremely unstable particle that decays rapidly. Yet it seems to be exactly the right candidate for the Higgs field theory that gives particles mass. Nikhef was and remains closely involved in the ATLAS experiment. Following the discovery, the experiments at CERN have spared no effort to better characterize the discovered particle and to better understand its properties and effects. The discovery has often been called the capstone of particle theory, but was in fact the beginning of a new era in particle physics. In 2013, theorists Peter Higgs and François Englert received the Nobel Prize in Physics for their theory.