Francis Halzen: Catching Neutrinos at the South Pole (#276)

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Brian Keating

Science, Physics, Natural Sciences

4.7 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 30 November 2022

⏱️ 88 minutes

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Summary

Francis Halzen is the Hilldale and Gregory Breit Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University Wisconsin-Madison and principal investigator for the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, the world's largest neutrino detector, he is the Director of the Institute for Elementary Particle Physics, and the Hilldale and Gregory Breit Distinguished Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A theoretician studying problems at the interface of particle physics, astrophysics, and cosmology, Halzen has been working since 1987 on the AMANDA experiment, a first-generation neutrino telescope at the South Pole. AMANDA observations represent a proof of concept for IceCube. After six years of construction, IceCube became operational in 2010. IceCube searches for neutrinos from the most violent astrophysical sources: events like exploding stars, gamma ray bursts, and cataclysmic phenomena involving black holes and neutron stars. The IceCube telescope is a powerful tool to search for dark matter, and could reveal the new physical processes associated with the enigmatic origin of the highest energy particles in nature. The most important result from the IceCube was the clear break-through observation of high-energy neutrinos (about 100 times more energetic than the particles accelerated today in the world’s most powerful machine, the LHC at CERN) in 2013, from as yet not identified sources outside the Galaxy. This discovery has stimulated the planning and development of even larger neutrino telescopes, both at the South Pole and deep under the ocean. https://user-web.icecube.wisc.edu/ Connect with me: 🏄‍♂️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating 📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/DrBrianKeating 🔔 Subscribe https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 📝 Join my mailing list; just click here http://briankeating.com/list ✍️ Detailed Blog posts here: https://briankeating.com/blog.php 🎙️ Listen on audio-only platforms: https://briankeating.com/podcast Subscribe to the Jordan Harbinger Show for amazing content from Apple’s best podcast of 2018! Can you do me a favor? Please leave a rating and review of my Podcast: 🎧 On Apple devices, click here, https://apple.co/39UaHlB - scroll down to the ratings and leave a 5 star rating and review The INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast. 🎙️On Spotify it’s here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2G3PRMUhxGQkyQzLiiCqlf?si=8656119458df4555 🎧 On Audible it’s here : https://www.audible.com/pd/Into-the-Impossible-With-Brian-Keating-Podcast/B08K56PXJX?action_code=ASSGB149080119000H&share_location=pdp&shareTest=TestShar Other ways to rate here: https://briankeating.com/podcast- Support the podcast on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating or become a Member on YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Being a physicist from all objective point of views is a miserable career.
0:15.6	Yes.
0:16.6	And I don't have to state the reasons.
0:19.4	The only reason it's worth doing is you just enjoy this, you're obsessed by it, you love what you're doing.
0:26.0	And so if you do it as a job, it's going to be very, very disappointing, I think.
0:33.1	So don't underestimate yourself.
0:36.7	Until I went on this crazy adventure
0:39.9	of Amanda an Ice Cube, I always live with the insecurity that I didn't belong to the circles I moved in,
0:49.0	which I think must be true for almost every graduate student. Just get over that.
0:54.0	Hello and welcome to another fascinating and ultimately endearing episode of the Into the Impossible
1:04.4	Podcast.
1:05.2	This is such a treat to present Francis Hallson, who not only is one of the greatest physicists
1:09.7	living today, but met the greatest cosmologist perhaps of the 20th century, the man who came up with
1:16.0	the big-bank theory, according to some accounts, and that's, that's of course a father,
1:21.2	Lejeorgia LeMaitetre and I know I'm
1:24.0	pronouncing that right because he was Belgian and today's guest is Belgian too and
1:26.8	that's Professor Francis Halzen who had that honor of knowing Le Maetre and also
1:31.5	teaching yours truly for a brief quarter while I was a student at the University of Wisconsin at Madison home of the Badgers, the fighting cheese heads.
1:40.0	I love my time there, I miss my time there. He's the second professor to come on the show from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. My PhD advisor, Peter Timby, was on about a year ago, maybe for our Father's Day episode a year or so ago,
1:52.6	and that was great.
1:53.7	But I never had Peter Timby, my graduate advisor
1:56.4	for a professor, unlike Francis, who is today's guest.
	...

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