Neutrinos as Cosmic Messengers: A Decade of Discovery and the Path Forward

08 February - 5 March 2027

Maria Petropoulou, Francis Halzen, Walter Winter, Aart Heijboer, Elisa Resconi

Neutrino astrophysics is a young and rapidly evolving field at the intersection of particle physics and astrophysics. It offers a new way of exploring the Universe using neutrinos - nearly massless particles that can escape from distant and extreme astrophysical environments, and can travel cosmological distances essentially without loss of signal. Recent discoveries by large detectors such as IceCube and KM3NeT have shown that high-energy neutrinos come from a variety of cosmic environments, including active galaxies and even our own Milky Way. Because cosmic rays - high-energy protons and nuclei - are the parent particles of neutrinos, the latter provide unique clues to the “particle accelerators” that operate in the Universe. With new, more powerful detectors under construction, and many proposals for the next-generation detectors, the field is entering a decisive phase. This workshop will bring together scientists from theory and experiment to tackle three key questions: where do neutrinos come from, what can we learn by combining them with other cosmic signals, and how can we best detect them in the future? By answering these questions, neutrino astrophysics has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of the extreme Universe and uncover the processes that drive the most powerful particle accelerators in nature.