Every morning, before breakfast, five eggs meet in mortal combat. One is crowned victor, the others are scrambled and eaten. For nearly three years, this ritual was repeated daily with the solemnity of the Colosseum and the rigor of a Ph.D. The toll: 5340 duels, 2693 combatants, and one question that refused to die: what makes an egg invincible? From this early morning carnage rose a legend whose exploits are sung by aspiring champions: Eggon Targaryen reigned for 70 combats, defying pure chance by more than eighteen orders of magnitude. If it is not luck, then what? Armed with a kitchen scale, calipers, an unreasonable devotion to record-keeping, and a thick shell against family mockery, I weighed and measured every contender. This silly eggsperiment escalated into a statistical investigation of increasing sophistication. Correlations rounded up the suspects. Probability distributions described the fate of the many. A Markov chain forged a digital twin. A Bradley–Terry model ranked every warrior who ever entered the ring. Fracture physics guided the questions, but statistics delivered the answers: Myths were confronted, heroes unmasked as frauds, and one crucial variable refused to stay hidden. This talk is a fun, slightly unhinged introduction to data science and statistical inference, and proof that serious physics needs no multimillion-dollar labs: only curiosity, patience, and an appetite for breakfast. Come learn which eggs win, why they win, and settle a question anthropologists still debate: what do physicists do for fun?
Sébastien Francoeur is a professor of engineering physics at Polytechnique Montreal. He chose the University of Colorado Boulder for his Ph.D. for its proximity to majestic mountains and countless climbing routes, then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Basic Sciences of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, conveniently located at the foot of the Rockies' finest mountain-bike trails. Despite appearances, his research is not limited to the products of the avian reproductive system. His group uses advanced optical probes to study electronic states and processes, and uses optical fields to control and manipulate quantum states. He has made significant contributions to the understanding of semiconductor nanostructures, van der Waals crystals, and the quantum control of spin-photon interfaces. From 2020 to 2026, he directed Photonique Quantique Québec, and he now leads a $50M initiative to create the Center for Quantum Optics Engineering. He teaches statistical physics at the undergraduate level and quantum optics at the graduate level. Outside Polytechnique, he is an avid trail runner and trail builder who runs ultramarathons just for fun. More recently, to the great embarrassment of his three children, he has served as the world’s sole chronicler of the Egg War.