The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences honoured the Belgian-American physicist on 6 October 2026 for work that opened a new window on cosmic neutrinos.

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• Francis Halzen won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics, announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on 6 October 2026.
• The citation recognises his decisive contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin.
• Halzen is a Belgian-American particle physicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is the sole laureate this year.
• IceCube is located at the South Pole in Antarctica, with the University of Wisconsin-Madison as its lead institution.
• Halzen first proposed IceCube in 1988, recognising that the clear ice beneath the South Pole could serve as a detector.
• When a neutrino strikes an atomic nucleus in the ice, it gives off a flash of light that buried sensors record.
• Neutrinos are nearly undetectable particles that pass through the Earth and human bodies, and researchers believe they offer clues to how the universe evolved.
• IceCube detected the first high-energy neutrinos arriving from distant galaxies.
• The chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics said Halzen's vision has paved the way for a new kind of astronomy.
• The prize carries 12 million Swedish kronor, and the 2025 physics prize went to John Clarke, Michel Devoret and John Martinis for macroscopic quantum tunnelling.

Tags: NobelPrizePhysics, IceCube, NeutrinoAstronomy