Belgian physicist Prof Francis Halzen has won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his pioneering work on an observatory that detects particles from space, shedding gentle on the distant universe.
Halzen led the development of IceCube at the South Pole, which makes use of a cubic kilometre of Antarctic ice fitted with gentle sensors to detect particles called neutrinos. These carry info about violent, high-energy processes in the cosmos.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said “his vision and scientific leadership have been fundamental for the IceCube Neutrino Observatory”.
Halzen first introduced his imaginative and prescient for detecting neutrinos at the South Pole in 1988.
“Francis Halzen has led an international team of researchers and engineers who have provided us with a fantastic instrument,” said Mark Pearce, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics.
“His tenacity and scientific vision has paved the way for a new kind of astronomy,”
Neutrinos are elusive subatomic particles. The Sun produces huge numbers of them: every second, billions cross harmlessly through an space the measurement of your fingernail.
But IceCube is looking for much higher-energy neutrinos, those produced by violent processes far beyond our Solar System — in distant galaxies.
Neutrinos can be thought of as astronomical messengers that level to those elementary occasions.
At the observatory, most neutrinos cross straight through the ice, but sometimes one interacts with it, producing particles that give off a telltale flash of gentle.
These uncommon alerts carry clues to where the neutrinos came from and the excessive situations that produced them — permitting scientists to examine locations that atypical telescopes can’t simply see.
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