"I Thought It Would Fail!" Francis Halzen: Winner of the 2026 Nobel Prize In Physics [Reupload from 2022]

The physicist who turned a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice into a telescope says the most exciting moment of his career was not the discovery. It was the first atmospheric neutrino. Before that, he was deep in debt to NSF and his own university with no neutrino to show for it.

Francis Halzen is principal investigator of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole and Hilldale and Gregory Breit Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

We cover: why ice under the South Pole is clearer than anything a lab can make, the 2,600 TeV event that dwarfs the LHC, why IceCube sees more energy in cosmic neutrinos than in gamma rays, how neutrinos crossing the universe test quantum gravity, and the quark he refused to believe in.

Physics is a miserable career unless you are obsessed by it.

Recorded in 2022, before IceCube detected neutrinos from our own galaxy.

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Chapters

00:00 Physics is a miserable career, unless

02:54 A textbook written before the W was found

06:11 Breaking into Lemaître's computer at night

10:57 Do scientists owe the public anything?

13:55 Deep in debt with zero neutrinos

19:40 The persuasion nobody teaches scientists

20:15 Why it could only be the South Pole

23:20 Learn physics by doing, not by courses

26:00 How to turn Antarctic ice into a telescope

31:30 2,600 TeV: far beyond the LHC

35:00 More energy in neutrinos than gamma rays

40:00 Tracing ghost particles to NGC 1068

46:00 Testing quantum gravity with neutrinos

1:01:00 Ten times the ice for the same price

1:07:08 What he would leave his descendants

1:11:19 What his generation should be proud of

1:12:51 The quark he refused to believe in

1:17:09 Imagination can trump intelligence

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A production of imagination.ucsd.edu

Executive Producer: Brian Keating

Producer P.G.A: Stuart Volkow

Editing: Lucas Scheiblich

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