Stockholm, Kingdom of Sweden (Weltexpress). Francis Halzen has been awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics, as announced today in Stockholm by the Nobel Committee for Physics of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, founded in 1739.
The scientist from the Kingdom of Belgium, who was born in Tienen on 23 March 1944, is receiving this prestigious award for his “pioneering contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin”, according to the Committee.
Halzen, aged 82, has conducted research in areas including particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology. In the course of his work, he succeeded in discovering and detecting particularly high-energy neutrinos from the cosmos. These particles, which have an extremely low mass, were and are referred to as ‘ghost particles’ because they interact with matter so very little – for a long time, neutrinos were even thought to be massless – and, as they also have no electric charge, they cannot be made ‘visible’.
Trillions of these particles are said to pass through the Earth – and even through the tip of our nose – every second, without making our nose itch.
In any case, no one had managed to detect the neutrinos. Halzen tried to do so using thick ice at the South Pole. The idea for IceCube – a massive particle detector containing one cubic kilometre of ice – was born and took shape.
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With material from TASS.
