IceCube neutrino observatory<\/a>, which made the first detection of high-energy extraterrestrial neutrinos in 2013, soon after it was switched on.<\/p>\nTo build the observatory, scientists, technicians and engineers embedded thousands of basketball-sized light detectors into a cubic kilometre of ice to detect faint flashes of light that can result when neutrinos from space crash into atomic nuclei.<\/p>\n
Announcing the prize on Tuesday, the Nobel committee said Halzen won \u201cfor decisive contributions to the IceCube neutrino observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin\u201d. He receives a prize of 12m Swedish kronor (about \u00a3900,000).<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels strange,\u201d Halzen told a press briefing on winning the prize. \u201cI hope it reflects on the really courageous people who joined me in the beginning of this project when no really respectable, conservative physicist would have joined me, but many talented people did.\u201d<\/p>\n
Francis Halzen speaking in 2018. He received the news of his Nobel win while travelling in Italy. Photograph: Reuters TV\/Reuters<\/p>\n
Neutrinos are mysterious particles that are as elusive as they are ubiquitous. They pass through almost everything they encounter, from people to planets. Every second, billions of neutrinos from the sun pass unnoticed through the body. But every now and then, a neutrino will interact with the nucleus of an atom in a collision that can be picked up by a sensitive detector.<\/p>\n
Halzen realised that brief flickers of light from neutrino collisions could be detected in clear, glacial ice and in 1988 put forward a plan to convert a chunk of the south pole into a neutrino observatory. The detector uses Earth to shield against the background noise of cosmic rays, and has downwards-facing light sensors to detect neutrinos passing through the planet from the northern hemisphere. Apart from a hostile environment for the team, the site benefited from being far from sources of interference and the risk of vibrations from earthquakes.<\/p>\n
After the first detection of high-energy extraterrestrial neutrinos in 2013, scientists working on IceCube identified the first cosmic source of neutrinos 3.7bn light years away.<\/p>\n
The observatory has paved the way for a new kind of astronomy. Until now, researchers have learned about the cosmos from light, other electromagnetic radiation, and gravitational waves. Neutrinos are considered messengers from the cosmos and provide fresh clues as to how the universe evolved.<\/p>\n
Halzen, who received the news while travelling in Italy, said he was working on a new proposal and hoped that winning the prize would help in getting it approved.<\/p>\n
Dr Patrick Dunne at Imperial College London welcomed the prize. \u201cFor all of human history the only way we\u2019ve been able to understand things outside our solar system is with light. Detecting neutrinos from astrophysical sources opens up a new lens, so it isn\u2019t overstating things to liken this to when Galileo first pointed a telescope at the stars,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNeutrinos are the most abundant massive particles and their ability to pass through matter much more easily than light makes them ideal for observing distant phenomena or the inside of extreme phenomena like those seen by IceCube,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Other experiments to understand neutrinos include the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (Dune) in the US and the Hyper-Kamiokande detector in Japan.<\/p>\n
The observations of cosmic neutrinos have led some scientists to speculate that the ghostly particles could be used by alien civilisations to send messages across the universe. Asked what he made of the idea, Halzen said: \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ll go there. We have enough realistic problems to deal with right now [to] make neutrino astronomy a reality rather than worry about this.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he added that when astronomers have opened new windows on the universe, they often make unexpected discoveries. \u201cI\u2019m sure this will be true for neutrinos 50 years from now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
On Monday, three scientists won the Nobel prize in medicine for optogenetics<\/a>, a powerful technique that has allowed researchers to shed unprecedented light on the workings of the brain. The Nobel prize in chemistry is announced on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Nobel prize in physics 2026 has been awarded to a researcher who turned an enormous block of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":918500,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[64,63,292,128],"class_list":["post-918499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-physics","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-physics","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=918499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/918500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=918499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=918499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=918499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}