The Observatory in Antarctica gave Francis Halzen the Nobel Prize in Physics

According to the academy, this year's Nobel laureate in physics, the Belgian Francis Halzen, has laid the foundation for a completely new kind of astronomy. He receives the prize for his insight that the ice at the South Pole can be used to track the extremely elusive particles called neutrinos.

The result of this insight was the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, which was completed in 2011, where Francis Halzen and his colleagues already after a couple of years discovered the first high-energy neutrinos. The observatory consists of one cubic kilometer of ice equipped with light sensors.

"With IceCube, researchers can capture neutrinos from extremely energetic processes far out in the universe," writes the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in a press release.

However, the construction of the observatory was associated with a number of risks, says Francis Halzen.

- Above all, we didn't know if it was big enough. We had no idea, he said during the press conference.

Neutrinos can be called the universe's shyest particle, with no electric charge and very little mass. By and large, all pass unnoticed through matter and only very rarely does a neutrino make itself known by colliding with an atomic nucleus.

- Every second, more than a billion neutrinos pass through my hand, says Professor Mark Pearce, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Physics and holds up his hand at the presentation of this year's prize winners.

This applies to the low energy neutrinos coming from the Sun. The high-energy neutrinos focused on by Francis Halzen are much rarer and come from outer space.

According to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the neutrino tracks collected in IceCube will provide knowledge about "the violent environments where high-energy neutrinos can arise". In the long run, it could lead to discoveries about previously completely unknown phenomena in the universe, something Francis Halzen also believes.

- When you look back at previous occasions when new windows have been opened to the universe, it has always led to unexpected discoveries. I am convinced that the same will apply to the neutrinos, he says, and is careful to point out that the research now being awarded the finest prize of them all "is based on the hard work of thousands of brave and talented people".

Francis Halzen was born in 1944 in Belgium, where he also studied to become a particle physicist, although he has been working at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the USA for many years.

The prize sum is SEK 12 million.