Over 9,100 miles separates the UW-Madison campus from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole, but there’s a strong connection between the two. On Tuesday, UW-Madison professor Francis Halzen received a Nobel Prize in physics at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm for pioneering the telescope.
“The success of this project involved some luck,” Halzen said in a statement. “I was fortunate to be at UW, where unconventional ideas can thrive and where I had the support of a remarkable community.”
Here’s the backstory on Halzen and the scientific breakthroughs that have made IceCube such a hot topic in physics and astronomy. [UW-Madison News]
Who Is Francis Halzen?
The Belgian-born Halzen, now 82, joined the faculty at UW-Madison in 1972 and has received multiple awards for research over the last half-century. He began researching deep Antarctic ice and in 1987 started the Antarctic Muon And Neutrino Detector Array, known as AMANDA, which is considered an ancestor of the IceCube project. [ 🔒WSJ]
What Is IceCube?
IceCube is not a traditional telescope like you’d peer through at UW-Madison’s Washburn Observatory. Instead, it’s embedded deep within a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice, using thousands of light sensors to survey the universe for ghostly particles called high-energy neutrinos.
The way IceCube works is that, if a neutrino passes through the Earth and interacts with the ice, it will produce a flash of light that IceCube’s sensors will pick up. Before IceCube, there was no way to monitor neutrinos, but Halzen’s research has created the field of “neutrino astronomy,” and other telescopes (including an underwater telescope) have since been created.
The telescope was completed in 2011 and is operated by a team of 400 scientists around the world, including at UW-Madison. [Washburn Observatory, 🔒NYT]
What Are Neutrinos?
Neutrinos are nearly massless particles that rarely interact with other forms of matter, and the neutral variety of neutrinos are everywhere. But much rarer are what is called “high-energy neutrinos,” which can provide valuable information on supermassive black holes, galaxies and other objects in the universe.
How Much Is a Nobel Prize Worth, Anyway?
In addition to bragging rights for UW-Madison, Halzen will be awarded $1.2 million from the committee. The prize for physics is one of six issued by the academy each year.
