IT·Science News

Nobel physics prize for IceCube: Francis Halzen turned Antarctic ice into a neutrino detector

The 2026 Nobel prize in physics went on Tuesday, October 6, to Francis Halzen, a Belgian physicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “for decisive contributions to the IceCube neutrino observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin”. The Guardian said IceCube made the first detection of high-energy neutrinos from outside the solar system in 2013, soon after it was switched on.

Halzen proposed the idea in 1988. Thousands of basketball-sized light sensors were embedded in a cubic kilometre of ice at the south pole to catch the faint flashes made when a neutrino hits an atomic nucleus.

“And I just had to live long enough, so here I am.” — Francis Halzen, 82, via The Korea Herald (AP)

Al Jazeera quoted Physics Today's editor saying the prize has rarely gone to a single winner in recent years. It also reported Halzen's joke that he hoped the prize would help a research proposal he is working on get approved. The UAE's Khaleej Times led on Belgium's win.

How each outlet framed it

• The Guardian — how the detector works and why ice is a good place to look.
• Al Jazeera — the single-winner angle and what neutrinos may reveal about exploding stars.
• The Korea Herald — AP's interview: Halzen put his yearly chance of winning at 1 in 20.
• Khaleej Times — a short national-win headline.

Where the numbers differ: The Guardian wrote that billions of neutrinos from the sun pass through the body every second; Al Jazeera put the figure at roughly 100 trillion solar and cosmic neutrinos. Al Jazeera also noted IceCube's data “may even reveal” unknown phenomena, which has not yet happened.