‘Ghost particles’ from area telescope wins 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics

Belgian physicist Prof Francis Halzen has received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his pioneering work on an observatory that detects particles from area, shedding gentle on the distant universe.

Halzen led the event of IceCube on the South Pole, which makes use of a cubic kilometre of Antarctic ice fitted with gentle sensors to detect particles known as neutrinos. These carry details about violent, high-energy processes within the cosmos.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences stated “his imaginative and prescient and scientific management have been elementary for the IceCube Neutrino Observatory”.

Halzen first offered his imaginative and prescient for detecting neutrinos on the South Pole in 1988.

“Francis Halzen has led an overseas crew of researchers and engineers who’ve offered us with a incredible instrument,” stated Mark Pearce, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics.

“His tenacity and scientific imaginative and prescient has paved the way in which for a brand new type of astronomy,”

Neutrinos are elusive subatomic particles. The Sun produces huge numbers of them: each second, billions cross harmlessly via an space the dimensions of your fingernail.

But IceCube is looking for a lot higher-energy neutrinos, these produced by violent processes far past our Solar System — in distant galaxies.

Neutrinos will be considered astronomical messengers that time to these elementary occasions.

At the observatory, most neutrinos cross straight via the ice, however sometimes one interacts with it, producing particles that give off a telltale flash of sunshine.

These uncommon alerts carry clues to the place the neutrinos got here from and the intense situations that produced them — permitting scientists to analyze locations that strange telescopes can’t simply see.