What is IceCube, the giant Antarctic detector behind the 2026 Physics Nobel?

IceCube, the world's largest neutrino detector, is a cubic kilometre of ice at the South Pole fitted with 5,160 light sensors up to 2,450 metres deep. They catch faint blue flashes when neutrinos strike the ice. Completed in 2010, it detected high-energy neutrinos from deep space in 2013, work that won its principal investigator Francis Halzen this year's Physics Nobel.