[Regnum] The 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to Belgian-born American scientist Francis Halsen. The Nobel Committee press service announced this on October 6.
Halsen will receive the award for his contributions to the IceCube observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin.
The scientist is one of the co-authors of the IceCube project. The observatory, located at the South Pole, is designed to detect neutrinos—elementary particles that barely interact with matter and therefore can travel vast distances virtually unchanged, making them a valuable source of information about processes in space.
The observatory's system uses a cubic kilometer of South Pole ice as a giant detector, allowing it to detect neutrinos coming from space. High-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin were discovered by the observatory in 2013.
On October 5, the Nobel Committee announced that the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine had been awarded to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel for their discoveries in optogenetics. Hegemann and Nagel discovered the light-sensitive protein channelrhodopsin in single-celled algae, and Deisseroth adapted it to control neurons. Their discoveries formed the basis of a new method: scientists have learned to control nerve cell activity using light, thereby studying brain function.