Nobel Physics Prize goes to Francis Halzen for neutrino work

Halzen got the Nobel for his contributions to the IceCube neutrino Observatory and discovery of high-energy neutrinos. The committee described the neutrinos as "ghostly messages from space."

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Tuesday awarded the Nobel Prize in physics to Francis Halzen.

He received the award for this "decisive contributions to the IceCube neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin," the academy said.

The committee described the neutrinos as "ghostly messages from space."

Born in Belgium, the 82-year-old is a physics professor University of Wisconsin–Madison in the United States. Halzen acknowleged the prize as he was called on the phone by the panelists who presented the award.

He told the Nobel academy that he was "surprised" to get the prize and thanked the many contributors to the project, adding that the discoveries required a lot of "luck." 

"This was kind of an adventure, where success was not guaranteed. It was a long journey, but it finally worked," Halzen said.

The Belgian scientist said that he hoped his Nobel Prize reflects on the "really courageous people" who believed in the project. "No really respectable conservative physicists would have joined me, but many talented people did, and that's why im here," Halzen added.

What is the IceCube neutrino Observatory?

Neutrinos are tiny cosmic particles of ultra small mass that are present everywhere. They come from stars like the sun and trillions of them pass through our bodies every second.

Scientists are not able to observe the so-called ghost particles zooming around on their own, so they measure what happens when they collide with other bits of matter.

Halzen's idea of capturing neutrinos at the Earth's South Pole dates back to the 1980s. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory was subsequently built at the South Pole in Antarctica as a dedicated facility to capture and study the neutrinos.

"The neutrinos we detect are like fingerprints that help us understand the objects and phenomena where the neutrinos are produced," the group said.

"IceCube collaborators address several big questions in physics, like the nature of dark matter and the properties of the neutrino itself," the organization says.

Some 450 physicists from 58 institutions in 14 countries make up the IceCube collaboration.

More Nobels awarded this week

It is the second Nobel announced this week, after the medicine prize was awarded to three scientists whose on optogenetics has helped unravel how the brain works.

The prize money this year is 12 million Swedish kronor (about $1.2 million; €1 million), whether for an individual, a small group of laureates or an organization.

The physics prize has been awarded 119 times to 230 laureates between 1901 and 2025. 

Last year, it went to three scientists for their research on the strange behavior of subatomic particles called quantum tunneling that enabled the ultra-sensitive measurements achieved by MRI machines and laid the groundwork for better cellphones and faster computers.

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