威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校的弗朗西斯·哈尔岑（Francis Halzen）独揽本年度诺贝尔物理学奖，成为自1992年以来首位未与他人分享该奖项的物理学得主。该奖项表彰其对“冰立方中微子天文台”的决定性构想与领导——该探测器横跨南极一立方公里的冰层，汇聚了14个国家450名研究人员的力量。中微子因近乎无质量且缺乏电荷而被称为宇宙幽灵，每秒约有650亿个太阳中微子穿透人类指甲大小的区域。冰立方探测器于2004年开建、2011年竣工，在运行的头两年内就捕获了28个超高能宇宙中微子，开创了人类观测深空极端粒子加速源的高能天体物理学新视界。

生理学或医学奖授予卡尔·代瑟罗斯（Karl Deisseroth）、彼得·黑格曼（Peter Hegemann）与格奥尔格·纳格尔（Georg Nagel），以表彰他们奠定了光遗传学的基础。黑格曼最初在衣藻中发现光反应离子通道，随后与纳格尔合作证明了通道视紫红质-2（channelrhodopsin-2）在哺乳动物细胞中的光敏性。代瑟罗斯于2005年发表里程碑论文，将该蛋白引入神经元，并开创性地使用极细光纤在活体小鼠大脑中精准激发特定神经元以控制其胡须运动。如今，光遗传学已被数以千计的学术论文所应用，成为研究抑郁症、精神分裂症、成瘾及视网膜色素变性盲症等前沿疾病神经机制的核心工具。

化学奖则授予巴黎萨克雷大学的亨利·卡冈（Henri Kagan）和东京理科大学的硷井健三（Kenso Soai），表彰他们揭示了生命手性不对称性的起源机制。自然界中构成生物基础的氨基酸多为左手性，而糖类多为右手性。卡冈在1986年打破了产物手性比例受制于催化剂的假说，证明左手性过量3倍的催化剂能催化生成过量6倍的产物；硷井健三在2003年进一步实现了手性自催化放大，在微小的不对称初始条件下，仅通过3次反应循环就将溶液的手性不对称性放大了63万倍，首次在化学实验中复现了从几乎对称的无机分子演化出绝对手性偏向的过程。

Francis Halzen of the University of Wisconsin-Madison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics as a sole laureate—the first in physics since 1992—for his pivotal vision behind the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. Spanning a cubic kilometre of Antarctic ice and backed by 450 scientists across 14 nations, the facility detects elusive subatomic particles; for context, roughly 65bn solar neutrinos traverse an area the size of a human fingernail each second. Constructed between 2004 and 2011, IceCube recorded 28 ultra-high-energy cosmic neutrinos within its first two operational years, inaugurating neutrino astronomy to identify enigmatic extragalactic cosmic particle accelerators unhindered by intervening electromagnetic deflection.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel for pioneering optogenetics, a technology utilizing light to control living neurons. Hegemann discovered rapid light-sensitive ion mechanisms in Chlamydomonas algae, which Nagel expressed as functional channelrhodopsin-2 in mammalian cells. Deisseroth’s breakthrough 2005 publication introduced this channelrhodopsin-2 into mammalian neurons, followed by developing ultrathin optical fibres to optically stimulate specific neural circuits in living mice to direct physical behaviors like whisker twitches. Optogenetics now anchors thousands of neuroscience studies exploring neural circuits underlying depression, schizophrenia, addiction, and experimental therapies for retinitis pigmentosa.

The Chemistry Nobel recognised Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai for elucidating how homochirality could emerge in prebiotic nature, where biological amino acids are predominantly left-handed and sugars right-handed. In 1986, Kagan disproved long-standing assumptions by demonstrating that a catalyst featuring a threefold left-handed enantiomeric excess could yield a product with a sixfold imbalance. In 2003, Soai engineered an asymmetric autocatalytic system: starting from minute initial enantiomeric imbalances, repeating the reaction just three times generated a 630,000-fold amplification of molecular asymmetry, providing the first laboratory demonstration of how near-symmetric precursors spontaneously evolve near-absolute chiral purity.

Source: This year’s Nobel science prizes are real-life sci-fi

Subtitle: Laureates pioneered neutrino astronomy, optogenetics and the study of mirror molecules

Dateline: Oct 8th 2026\n