Physics World’s updated pattern infographic puts Francis Halzen’s field in focus as condensed-matter physics and particle and nuclear physics appear to be due for a Nobel Prize. The publication has tracked the prize by field for about a decade, and its latest version points to those two areas next.
Physics World says its previous calls included Anton Zeilinger for the 2009, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2019 prizes before he won in 2022. That track record is part of why the new infographic is being read as a guide to which physics areas may be closest to recognition.
Physics World and Francis Halzen
The article centers on Physics World’s field-by-field pattern, not on a prize that has already been awarded. Its latest version suggests condensed-matter physics and particle and nuclear physics are the fields most likely to be next, and it uses past picks to show how the pattern has played out before.
Anton Zeilinger is the clearest example in that history. Physics World says it kept predicting him across five prize years — 2009, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2019 — before he received the Nobel Prize in 2022.
ATHENA and ALPHA
For particle and nuclear physics, Physics World points to work on CERN’s ATHENA and ALPHA collaborations. It says a prize for physicists working on those projects would recognize the first trapping of cold antihydrogen atoms and their detailed study.
Jeffrey Hangst is named as a founder of both ATHENA and ALPHA. Physics World says comparing antihydrogen with hydrogen could help explain why there is much more matter than antimatter in the universe, which gives the collaborations a broader scientific role than the headline result alone suggests.
Standard Model and quark-gluon plasma
The same prediction comes with a constraint. Physics World says those antimatter experiments have not found any significant deviations from the Standard Model description of antihydrogen, so the work has not yet produced the kind of mismatch that would force a new picture of the universe.
Physics World also says another possible particle and nuclear physics prize could go to the creation of the quark-gluon plasma, a state of matter that occurs very briefly when large nuclei are collided at high energies. The question the infographic leaves open is which specific discovery or collaboration the Nobel Prize in Physics will eventually recognize if that field is the one chosen next.
