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Turning 60

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On The Illusion Of Time And The Strange Economy Of Existence

I recently listened again to Richard Feynman explaining why the flowing of time is probably an...

RIP - Hans Jensen

Today I was saddened to hear of the passing of Hans Jensen, a physicist and former colleague in...

2026 Plans

This year opened in slow motion for me, at least work-wise. I have been on parental leave since...

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Tommaso DorigoRSS Feed of this column.

Tommaso Dorigo is an experimental particle physicist, who works for the INFN at the University of Padova, and collaborates with the CMS and the SWGO experiments. He is the president of the Read More »

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Guess the Plot 2 - Solution

Guess the Plot 2 - Solution

May 09 2011 | comment(s)

Okay, the riddle I posted two days ago  was indeed solved by theorists - albeit ones with good internet connections and smart search engines.

The figure, pasted below for your convenience, is from the CDF collaboration, and it refers to a "famous" analysis - one of the few important measurements for which Run II at the Tevatron was considered a good idea (thank god that one sold with the funding agencies, because there were sooo many others that eventually paid off!).


Excess ? What Excess ? ATLAS Clarifies.

Excess ? What Excess ? ATLAS Clarifies.

May 08 2011 | comment(s)

In a display of nonchalance that should teach us a thing or two, the ATLAS collaboration has put an end to the Easter Higgs Rumour (EHR), which brought the blogosphere in an excited state for at least a week, and experimentalists and theorists for even more time. They did so by publishing a very narrow-focused document, totaling less than five pages, where they discuss the backgrounds to Higgs boson decays in the diphoton final state.
Guess The Plot - Chapter 2

Guess The Plot - Chapter 2

May 06 2011 | comment(s)

My attempt at stimulating your curiosity with a scientific graph last time worked quite well, and I want to try it again. This time, however, you should not consider yourself eligible to participate if you are an experimental particle physicist (or in the process of becoming one). That's because I want to "lower the bar" a little, allowing non-experts in the game, and an experimentalist in HEP should recognize what this figure is quite easily. If you are a theorist, I am not sure -today's plot might be instantaneous for you to recognize, or not easy, depending on what you work on. I'll take Lubos as a testing ground. Lubos ?
No Comment On The Latest Rumor

No Comment On The Latest Rumor

May 04 2011 | comment(s)

As many of you know, I expressed here my strong doubts that the rumoured Higgs signal found by members of the ATLAS collaboration in the two-photon final state was due to a real particle, and went as far as to bet 2:1 against it (you can take the bet by just writing in the comments thread, but you must be a well-known individual who has a reputation in physics if you want to be taken seriously).
The Say Of The Week

The Say Of The Week

May 02 2011 | comment(s)

"There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers."

R. Feynman
An Interview On The ATLAS Signal

An Interview On The ATLAS Signal

Apr 27 2011 | comment(s)

The interest for the tentative new signal of a Higgs decay to photon pairs does not seem to cease. Yesterday I gave a short interview to Fabio De Sicot, on the latest Higgs rumour. Fabio works for an Italian radio station, Radio Città Fujiko.

The interview is available as a podcast here, but be aware that it is in Italian...