The 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to Belgian scientist Francis Halzen, a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the United States, for his decisive contribution to the creation of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos from space, infohub.kz reports.
As early as 1988, Halzen proposed using ice at the South Pole to search for neutrinos. These particles constantly fly through the universe and pass through the Earth and the human body, yet they are almost impossible to detect.
Occasionally a neutrino collides with an atom, producing a tiny flash of light. Special sensors are able to register that flash.
To achieve this, scientists built IceCube — a huge observatory hidden beneath the ice of Antarctica. It occupies about one cubic kilometer, and thousands of light sensors were installed in the ice to a depth of 2.5 km.
Why Antarctica? The ice there is very pure and contains almost no interference. In addition, the underground facility is shielded from many particles that could interfere with observations.
Construction of IceCube was completed in 2011. Soon scientists began detecting high-energy neutrinos, and later they were able to prove that some of them came from beyond the Solar System.
This became an important discovery for astronomy. Unlike light and other particles, neutrinos hardly change direction on their way to Earth, so they can tell scientists about the most powerful and mysterious processes in the universe.
“His persistence and scientific vision paved the way for a new kind of astronomy,” said Mark Pearce, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics.
Halzen was born in 1944 in Tienen, Belgium. In 1969, he received his PhD from the Catholic University of Leuven.
This year’s Nobel Prize amount is 12 million Swedish kronor (about 542 million tenge).
Nobel Week continues. On October 7, the chemistry laureates will be announced in Stockholm, on October 8 — the literature laureates. On October 9, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize will be revealed.
Earlier, Kursiv wrote that Elon Musk’s American space company SpaceX launched a Starship rocket from Texas, which it is developing to deliver cargo and people to space. Despite the premature shutdown of one engine, the ship reached orbit and began deploying 26 satellites for the Starlink satellite internet network.