Japanese Professors Welcome Nobel Prize for IceCube Project Chief

Chiba, Oct. 7 (Jiji Press)--Two Japanese professors have expressed their joy after University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Francis Halzen, who led an international project they participated in, was named winner of this year's Nobel Prize in Physics.

"We were able to catch a glimpse of the universe that no one has ever seen," Chiba University professor Shigeru Yoshida told a news conference at the university in the city of Chiba, east of Tokyo, Tuesday.

Yoshida, director of the university's International Center for Hadron Astrophysics, also said that he is "very happy" that Halzen won the prize for the IceCube project, which observed high-energy neutrinos in Antarctica.

Recalling his participation in the project in 2002, Yoshida said that people around him opposed his decision. "I was skeptical."

Yoshida said: "We should keep taking on new challenges. In the world of science, nothing is promised from the beginning."

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]