Nobel prize in physics goes to Francis Halzen for south pole work on neutrinos

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, in Antarctica. Photograph: Felipe Pedreros/IceCube/NSF

The Nobel prize in physics 2026 has been awarded to a researcher who turned an enormous block of ice at the south pole into a detector for ghostly particles called neutrinos that reach Earth from outer space.

Prof Francis Halzen, a Belgian particle physicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, led work on the IceCube neutrino observatory, which made the first detection of high-energy extraterrestrial neutrinos in 2013, soon after it was switched on.