Every October, the winners of the Nobel Prizes are announced. They are among the most famous prizes in the world. On 6 October 2026, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that the Nobel Prize in Physics would go to Francis Halzen.
Professor Halzen was born in Belgium and works at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the USA. He won the prize for his “decisive contributions” to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory.
What are neutrinos?
Neutrinos are tiny particles. They have no electric charge and almost no mass. They hardly ever bump into anything. That is why people call them “ghost particles”. Some neutrinos travel to Earth from far-away galaxies.
A telescope made of ice
How do you catch a ghost? In the late 1980s, Professor Halzen had a bold idea: use the thick ice of Antarctica. IceCube was built near the South Pole. It uses about one cubic kilometre of ice! Scientists placed 5,160 light sensors deep inside the ice, more than a kilometre below the surface.
Once in a while, a neutrino crashes into an atom in the ice. This makes a faint flash of light, and the sensors record it. In 2013, scientists announced that IceCube had found high-energy neutrinos coming from outside our solar system.
“No one knew whether it would succeed,” Halzen said about the project.
Other 2026 Nobel Prizes went to Canadian writer Anne Carson (Literature) and Navi Pillay of South Africa (Peace).
Think about it: Why do you think scientists built IceCube deep under thick ice, far away from cities?