Francis Halzen wins Nobel physics prize for Antarctic 'ghost particle' hunt

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

66% : Last week it celebrated the sun's return above the horizon after six months of night with a six-hole ice-golf tournament.
62% : "We could catch them in ice, that was the goal," Mr. Halzen said of the years-long effort to construct the observatory, which he described as opening "a window on the universe.
57% : An extension, IceCube-Gen2, encompassing 8 cubic kilometers of ice, is planned to become operational in 2033 and will be able to detect 10 times as many neutrinos, including much weaker ones.
53% : The observatory - in effect a telescope that shows neutrinos instead of light - is set in a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice, which extends to a depth of 2,500 meters below the surface near the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.
52% : Francis Halzen, UW-Madison Vilas Research Professor, speaks about the UW IceCube Neutrino Observatory Project during the "Discover Past, Present and Future: Black Holes, Neutrinos, and Life in Our Galaxy Symposium" held in Union South's Marquee Theater at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on April 13, 2023. -- UW-MADISON/BRYCE RICHTER STOCKHOLM -- The Belgian-American scientist Francis Halzen won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work creating an Antarctic observatory of ice to detect high-energy neutrinos, elusive subatomic particles that can reveal otherwise inaccessible information about the cosmos.
52% : Mr. Halzen, 82, realized that pristine ice at the South Pole could be used to track such neutrinos, sometimes known as "ghost particles" for the way they pass through the Earth without a trace, only interacting with matter extremely rarely.

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