The 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics goes to Francis Halzen . The Swedish Academy has decided to honor the work of the Belgian scientist, born in 1944 and a professor in the US, for the discovery of high-energy neutrinos that originate from the cosmos.
Halzen is in fact the head of researchers at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole station in Antarctica, the largest neutrino detector in the world, operational since 2010.
"Francis Halzen," the citation reads, " intuited that the ice at the South Pole could be used to detect particles known as neutrinos . His vision and scientific leadership were fundamental to the IceCube Observatory : a cubic kilometer of ice equipped with light sensors. Thanks to IceCube, researchers can detect neutrinos from extremely energetic processes in the distant universe . Neutrinos are everywhere, but they do not reveal themselves directly. They pass through the Earth and our bodies without our noticing. Very rarely, a single neutrino interacts with an atomic nucleus, making it possible for those with the appropriate instrumentation to detect it."
"The interactions between neutrinos, continuously detected by IceCube," the Academy concludes, "will provide researchers with new knowledge about the environments in which high-energy neutrinos can be generated, and may even reveal previously unknown cosmic phenomena."
(Unioneonline)
