alt Hacker NewsNobel Prize in Physics goes to Francis Halzen
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I'm in love with the cute little figure that came with the press release: https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2026/10/fig_fy_26_3x2.jpg
I appreciate the boldness of this project, it has an element of sci-fi to it. Building a base at the south pole to bury sensors in ice to measure elusive particles. The stuff of dreams!
What an amazing accomplishment! I played a very tiny part in this project and went to the South Pole in 2009 to help with construction. Didn't see any neutrinos the entire time I was there though :/
We think of receiving a Nobel Prize as something super rare and exceptional and it is. What still always astounds me though, is this:
There are nearly 300 living laureates. Enough to hold a yearly meetup for them in Lindau, where usually about 40 gather. This year, for the event's 75th anniversary, there were even about 70. Imagine that.
I worked with a guy who worked on IceCube. He flew down to the South Pole, went all the way to the station, just to install debian for their data processing systems. I was... a bit jealous.
The first time in as long as I can think that a single physicist was chosen.
Here's the APOD for IceCube back from 2011
https://science.nasa.gov/image-article/apod-2011-february-13...
Anyone else romanticize going to work at some remote location like the IceCube? Probably some escapism going on
Pretty cool. One of the big challenges in trying neutrino detection in ice is dealing with funding agencies. The optical properties of ice only get good when you are actually a few kilometers deep in very old ice. That is you can't just build a demonstrator in the nearest glacier with a few leftover photomultipliers, you need to go directly to Antarctica and bore a three kilometer hole into the ice. And projects where the MVP is quite expensive are always very hard to get funded.
Great news for UW-Madison and all the work that went into such a forward thinking, creative scientific instrument!
The last time a physicist won the award alone dates back to 1992, 34 years ago
Absolute loved this book by Halzen and Martin
Madison WI mentioned!
IceCube Neutrino Observatory - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLbegYWCqkg
Last years favorite finally wins it this time. https://www.rtbf.be/article/avec-icecube-le-physicien-belge-... (2025)
Neutrino physics is the frontier. It’s one area where we know there are “physics beyond the standard model” though IceCube hasn’t quite been able to answer the neutrino mass question.
As we celebrate the IceCube neutrino detector for wining this year Nobel Prize in Physics, people in my country India should feel lost for missing the opportunity to setup INO (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India-based_Neutrino_Observato...)
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/why-the-neu...
Quite rare for a it to be awarded to just one person.
Sometimes I think it would be nice if there were biographies that laid out when and how Nobel laureates made their discoveries. Then wouldn't it be possible to pattern how people discover certain phenomena?
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Just woke up this morning to this news. Thank God. Today is a good day.
Makes me sad, that even there we put our human stuff and Metal boxes
He receives the prize for conceiving the IceCube neutrino detector, a cubic-kilometer-sized detecter in the Antarctics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IceCube_Neutrino_Observatory
Mechanism is via conversion of neutrinos into charged particles which are then detected via Cherenkov radiation which is produced when a charged particle moves with speeds larger then the speed of light in the medium. (That is only possible because it is less than the speed of light in vacuum which cannot be exceeded.)
This was also discussed recently if you are interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49655286