CAMBRIDGE, United States, Oct 31, 2026 - Harvard University is leading TAMBO, a project with more than twenty international institutions to build a natural neutrino observatory in Peru's Colca Canyon, in Arequipa.

The observatory is designed to detect the universe's highest-energy neutrinos. The Colca Valley is the leading candidate site, and the canyon's geometry helps reduce the background that can swamp a detection.

The design details appear in Nature Astronomy, and the full observatory is planned for completion in 2028.

Space Nugget. Neutrinos barely interact with matter, so they cross the universe in straight lines and carry news from violent places that light cannot escape. Catching even a few needs a very large detector, which is why physicists use whole ice sheets, oceans and now a canyon.