Cherenkov Neutrino Telescopes: Recent Progress and Next Steps

Neutrino telescopes provide a unique observational gateway to the high-energy universe, enabling the study of cosmic accelerators and extreme environments that remain inaccessible to the other high-energy messengers. Although they share core detection principles with neutrino experiments in particle physics, such as the observation of Cherenkov radiation, their scientific objectives and operational constraints diverge markedly. This paper reviews the motivations behind astrophysical neutrino detection, outlines key design strategies across various media and deployment environments, and highlights the critical role of neutrino telescopes in the context of multimessenger astronomy. In particular, we emphasize their potential to illuminate the origins of cosmic rays and to probe the mechanisms driving the most energetic phenomena in the universe.