PSW 2466 ICE CUBE The Under the Ice Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica | Francis Halzen

Lecture Starts at 10:43
www.pswscience.org
PSW #2466
November 4, 2022
ICE-CUBE: The Under-the-Ice Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica
Opening a New Window on the Universe from the South Pole
Francis Halzen
Professor of Physics
University of Wisconsin-Madison
The IceCube project at the South Pole melted 86 holes over 1.5 miles deep in the Antarctic icecap to construct an enormous astronomical observatory. The experiment recently discovered a flux of neutrinos from deep space with energies more than a million times those of neutrinos produced at accelerator laboratories. These cosmic neutrinos are produced in some of the most violent processes in the universe and originate in the cosmic particle accelerators that are still enigmatic sources of cosmic rays. This lecture will discuss the IceCube telescope and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of cosmic origin. It will highlight the recent discovery that some high-energy neutrinos-and cosmic rays-originate from sources powered by rotating supermassive black holes.
Francis Halzen is a Vilas Research and Gregory Breit Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1972. He is the principal investigator of IceCube, the massive neutrino detector deep in Antarctic Ice at the South Pole.
Among other honors and awards Francis is the recipient of the Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award, the Balzan Prize, the Bruno Pontecorvo Prize of the American Astronomical Society, the IUPAP Yodh Prize, the Bruno Rossi Prize, the IUPAP Homi Bhabha Award and several honorary doctorates. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and he was named a Vilas Research Professor in 2021.
In September 2017, IceCube detected a high-energy neutrino from the direction of a blazar called TXS 0506+056. This was the first-ever evidence of a source of high-energy cosmic rays, whose origins have been notoriously difficult to pinpoint since they were discovered over one hundred years ago. The IceCube observatory’s first observation of high-energy cosmic neutrinos was awarded the Physics World Breakthrough of the Year Award.
Francis is an author on over 1,000 technical publications, co-author of the textbook Quarks and Leptons on modern particle physics, and he has written and edited several other books. His essay “Antarctic Dreams,” about the early days of AMANDA, IceCube’s precursor, was featured in The Best American Science Writing 2000. He speaks frequently at technical conferences, colloquia and workshops, and often gives public talks and speaks with the media as well.
Francis is a native of Belgium and he earned an MS and PhD in physics at the Catholic University of Leuven.
www.pswscience.org

[@skagarwalla]

Excellent pedagogical talk by Prof. Francis Halzen.

[@JonathanBrown1]

Bravo!