Belgian physicist Prof Francis Halzen has won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his pioneering work on an observatory that detects particles from space, shedding light on the distant universe. Yes, the universe has been shedding light on itself for billions of years, but it took a human with a shovel and a grant application to actually notice.

Halzen led the development of IceCube at the South Pole, which uses a cubic kilometre of Antarctic ice fitted with light sensors to detect particles called neutrinos. These carry information about violent, high-energy processes in the cosmos. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said "his vision and scientific leadership have been fundamental for the IceCube Neutrino Observatory" - which is a polite way of saying he looked at a continent made entirely of ice and thought, "What this needs is more sensors."

Halzen first presented his vision for detecting neutrinos at the South Pole in 1988. That's right: 1988. The same year CDs outsold vinyl for the first time, and the Soviet Union was still very much a thing. Patience, it turns out, is a scientific instrument too.

"Francis Halzen has led an international team of researchers and engineers who have provided us with a fantastic instrument," said Mark Pearce, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics. "His tenacity and scientific vision has paved the way for a new kind of astronomy." Tenacity, in this case, meaning several decades of not being deterred by the fact that his detector was buried under a kilometre of ice at the bottom of the world.

Neutrinos are elusive subatomic particles. The Sun produces vast numbers of them: every second, billions pass harmlessly through an area the size of your fingernail. Right now, as you read this, an unfathomable number are passing through your entire body, your phone, and the existential dread you're currently feeling. They do not care.

But IceCube is searching for much higher-energy neutrinos, those produced by violent processes far beyond our Solar System - in distant galaxies. Neutrinos can be thought of as astronomical messengers that point to those fundamental events. Messengers that don't knock, don't leave a note, and mostly just phase through your front door.

At the observatory, most neutrinos pass straight through the ice, but occasionally one interacts with it, producing particles that give off a telltale flash of light. These rare signals carry clues to where the neutrinos came from and the extreme conditions that produced them - allowing scientists to investigate places that ordinary telescopes cannot easily see. So: one cubic kilometre of Antarctic ice, a few thousand light sensors, and the occasional cosmic flash. It's not glamorous, but neither is winning a Nobel for something you proposed when mullets were in fashion.