Francis Halzen Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics

October 6, Kathmandu – The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics to scientist Francis Halzen. He received this honor for establishing the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and for his work in detecting high-energy cosmic neutrino particles. Halzen proposed the concept of identifying neutrino particles using the ice of the South Pole. He publicly introduced this plan for the first time in 1988.

Neutrinos are particles that permeate the universe and easily pass through the Earth and the human body. Occasionally, neutrinos collide with atomic nuclei. The light flashes generated from these collisions are recorded by sensors embedded in the pristine ice at the South Pole. Based on this principle, the IceCube Observatory was constructed in 2011 at the South Pole, covering an area of one cubic kilometer.