Francis Halzen turned South Pole Ice Into a Giant Telescope - Now It Has Won him the Nobel Prize in Physics

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Francis Halzen turned South Pole Ice Into a Giant Telescope – Now It Has Won him the Nobel Prize in Physics

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Francis Halzen of the University of Wisconsin-Madison has won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics for decisive contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin.

In 1988, a physicist pitched a wild idea: turn South Pole ice into a telescope.

Today, that idea won Francis Halzen the Nobel Prize in Physics.

The telescope is IceCube: 5,160 light sensors buried in a cubic kilometre of Antarctic ice.

It hunts neutrinos. 65 billion cosmic neutrinos from the Sun pass through your little fingernail every second.

Rarely, one hits an atom in the ice and makes a flash of blue light.

IceCube catches that flash and traces where it came from.

Neutrinos travel in straight lines, so they point right back to the violent places that made them.

In 2013, it found the first evidence of neutrinos from deep space. Later, it spotted some from our own galaxy.

Next, the team is planning IceCube-Gen2, with eight times the ice.

2 months ago

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Francis Halzen turned South Pole Ice Into a Giant Telescope - Now It Has Won him the Nobel Prize in Physics

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