YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Nobel Prize in Physics goes to Francis Halzen

160 points solarist 2 hours ago 39 comments

_Microft 2 hours ago | parent

He receives the prize for conceiving the IceCube neutrino detector, a cubic-kilometer-sized detecter in the Antarctics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IceCube_Neutrino_Observatory

Mechanism is via conversion of neutrinos into charged particles which are then detected via Cherenkov radiation which is produced when a charged particle moves with speeds larger then the speed of light in the medium. (That is only possible because it is less than the speed of light in vacuum which cannot be exceeded.)

This was also discussed recently if you are interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49655286

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation

fooker 50 minutes ago | parent

> produced when a charged particle moves with speeds larger then the speed of light in the medium.

Thanks, I had no idea this was possible!

https://xkcd.com/1053/

walrus01 44 minutes ago | parent

If anyone was wondering how some of that heavy stuff gets to the south pole to build such a large engineering project, at the farthest possible end of any logistics chain:

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=south+pol...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Pole_Traverse

https://octanepress.com/content/south-pole-traverse_antartic...

Significant amounts of things still come in by air cargo at great cost, but a lot also comes the long slow way.

tonyhart7 28 minutes ago | parent

I read all of that and other resources online and still couldn't understand why the hell we need to build that and especially in south pole antartica

mr_mitm 17 minutes ago | parent

Where else would you go look for a cubic km of ice?

Intermernet 15 minutes ago | parent

The best science comes from areas that have no obvious use. The original insights into nuclear physics, quantum physics and relativity were all pure thought experiments. They led to the world we live in.

I'm personally very happy that we're still funding science that isn't obviously monetised.

The reason for Antarctica is that it's the only place you find cubic kilometres of stable ice that doesn't drift around.

jahnu 1 hour ago | parent

Here's the APOD for IceCube back from 2011

https://science.nasa.gov/image-article/apod-2011-february-13...

cgeier 1 hour ago | parent

The first time in as long as I can think that a single physicist was chosen.

bananaflag 1 hour ago | parent

1992

lhd1 1 hour ago | parent

I wonder - was there really no other people they could have given it to? The detection of gravitational waves was split between a theorist, experimentalist and a person who had a big hand in shepherding the project along. Could not the same have been done here?

dauertewigkeit 1 hour ago | parent

Just happy it's not another AI related prize.

newsicanuse 1 hour ago | parent

+1

rurban 1 hour ago | parent

Last years favorite finally wins it this time. https://www.rtbf.be/article/avec-icecube-le-physicien-belge-... (2025)

omeysalvi 1 hour ago | parent

Just woke up this morning to this news. Thank God. Today is a good day.

JimTheMan 1 hour ago | parent

I'm in love with the cute little figure that came with the press release: https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2026/10/fig_fy_26_3x2.jpg

I appreciate the boldness of this project, it has an element of sci-fi to it. Building a base at the south pole to bury sensors in ice to measure elusive particles. The stuff of dreams!

Sharlin 1 hour ago | parent

To be fair, the base was already there and logistically essential. The IceCube topside building is just a part of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, about a km or so from the Elevated Station.

ungovernableCat 1 hour ago | parent

A trillion of these silly small guys pass through us every second. Funny to imagine them like that.

Kelteseth 58 minutes ago | parent

There are many things that my brain just can't handle, the size of the universe, more than 3 dimensions and this fact especially.

felixthehat 47 minutes ago | parent

The same guy (Johan Jarnestad) has been doing all the nobel prize illustrations and infographics for years!

https://www.infographics.se/

https://www.behance.net/JohanJarnestad

weinzierl 1 hour ago | parent

We think of receiving a Nobel Prize as something super rare and exceptional and it is. What still always astounds me though, is this:

There are nearly 300 living laureates. Enough to hold a yearly meetup for them in Lindau, where usually about 40 gather. This year, for the event's 75th anniversary, there were even about 70. Imagine that.

NitpickLawyer 57 minutes ago | parent

> yearly meetup for them in Lindau

IIRC Oppenheimer facilitated / sponsored a meeting there after the Manhattan Project, as a gathering where physicists could talk freely about physics for a change.

PopePompus 41 minutes ago | parent

Every year a few of the Nobel Prize winners attend the IgNobel Prize ceremony and dance on stage.

rator9521 1 hour ago | parent

Oh, it's amazing that the AI didn't prize.

terminalbraid 1 hour ago | parent

Why? They gave that out already.

logicchains 56 minutes ago | parent

There's no such thing as AI, it's just Jürgen Schmidhuber in a small room typing really really quickly. And no way they're giving him a Nobel Prize.

tesnorindian 1 hour ago | parent

As we celebrate the IceCube neutrino detector for wining this year Nobel Prize in Physics, people in my country India should feel lost for missing the opportunity to setup INO (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India-based_Neutrino_Observato...)

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/why-the-neu...

UI-EDITOR 49 minutes ago | parent

isnt theni the place where hemp farm were destroyed in 1800?

immighelper 48 minutes ago | parent

That's an uncharitable take. The proposed observatory was through pristine dense forest, and one of the most important elephant corridors in Asia. It was opposed by the democratically elected government, and litigated in courts in an open and transparent way. The physics gains do not outweigh the environmental cost, and the fact that scientists were able to get valuable data from an observatory in the lifeless Antarctic is further justification not to build this.

tesnorindian 32 minutes ago | parent

IceCube observatory is for studying the high energy cosmic neutrinos from a distant galaxy or black holes. But the one proposed INO is to study the low and medium energy atmospheric neutrinos. INO was designed to study the mass ordering of neutrinos. Both observatories are for studying different aspects and properties of neutrinos and are not the same.

karlkloss 58 minutes ago | parent

Still no affordable antigravity? Dang.

tesnorindian 50 minutes ago | parent

IceCube Neutrino Observatory - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLbegYWCqkg

PaulHoule 47 minutes ago | parent

Neutrino physics is the frontier. It’s one area where we know there are “physics beyond the standard model” though IceCube hasn’t quite been able to answer the neutrino mass question.

hyperionultra 40 minutes ago | parent

What is practical application of Francis work?

guidopallemans 1 minute ago | parent

Neutrino detectors are essential in receiving communication from other galaxies.

Upvoter33 35 minutes ago | parent

Great news for UW-Madison and all the work that went into such a forward thinking, creative scientific instrument!

birdboat00 31 minutes ago | parent

Makes me sad, that even there we put our human stuff and Metal boxes

jdw64 23 minutes ago | parent

Sometimes I think it would be nice if there were biographies that laid out when and how Nobel laureates made their discoveries. Then wouldn't it be possible to pattern how people discover certain phenomena?

Forgeties79 1 minute ago | parent

The common denominator is money and time. The only way to get more results is to put more funding out there.

yk 8 minutes ago | parent

Pretty cool. One of the big challenges in trying neutrino detection in ice is dealing with funding agencies. The optical properties of ice only get good when you are actually a few kilometers deep in very old ice. That is you can't just build a demonstrator in the nearest glacier with a few leftover photomultipliers, you need to go directly to Antarctica and bore a three kilometer hole into the ice. And projects where the MVP is quite expensive are always very hard to get funded.