Belgian physicist Francis Halzen won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics for creating a giant detector in Antarctica that captures neutrinos, so-called “ghost particles” from space that scientists believe offer clues to how the universe evolved. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the prestigious award in Stockholm on Tuesday, crediting Halzen with a central role in the construction of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. List of recommended 3-item storiesend of list The neutrino interactions collected by the observatory provide information about how high-energy neutrinos are created and may even reveal previously unknown phenomena, the Academy said. “It was a big surprise, and obviously I wasn’t expecting it,” Halzen said, speaking to the committee by phone from Italy, in a call broadcast at the news conference to announce the winner. The 82-year-old said he had already been predicted to win the Nobel Prize, but the announcement still made him feel “strange.” “I’m working on a proposal and I hope this award helps get it approved,” he said to laughter from the audience. There are approximately 100 trillion solar and cosmic neutrinos passing through our bodies every second. Halzen first proposed the IceCube project in 1988, realizing that the transparent ice beneath the South Pole could act as a detector, so in the rare case that a neutrino collides with an atomic nucleus, it emits a flash of light that buried sensors can record. Richard Fitzgerald, editor-in-chief of Physics Today, said that although hundreds of people built the observatory, “it all started with one person,” noting that the physics prize has rarely gone to a single winner in recent years. “People joined him in the search for these neutrino messengers. The messenger brings information from the cosmos,” committee member Eva Olsson said during the press conference. “They opened the door to distant galaxies and tell us about star explosion processes.” Eva Lindroth, a researcher in Stockholm and a member of the Nobel Committee, told Al Jazeera that the Halzen observatory has helped scientists understand high-energy particles. “The nice thing about neutrinos is that they come right at us,” he said. “This way, we can ultimately understand these sources of high-energy particles and better understand how things work in the universe, such as how galaxies form and the role of black holes in that process. “This provides a new way of studying the universe,” Lindroth added. “They give us information that we can’t get any other way.” Last year’s prize went to John Clarke, Michel Devoret and John Martinis for their experiments in quantum physics. On Monday, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to two American scientists for discoveries that helped explain how the brain works. The next prize will be the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which will be announced on Wednesday in Stockholm. The Nobel laureates will receive their awards at a ceremony on December 10, commemorating the anniversary of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, who established the prize. Members of the royal families of Sweden and Norway will attend.
