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Turning 60

Strange how time goes by. And strange I would say that, since I know time does not flow, it is...

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...

Tommaso Dorigo

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 »

Z' Bosons: The Dream Moves Away

Jul 03 2010 | comment(s)

Z' Bosons: The Dream Moves Away

The long-distance competition between CERN and Fermilab - between Europe and the US, if you like - for supremacy in the field of fundamental physics is made of direct challenges, like the search for the Higgs boson, as much as of indirect skirmishes, such as one facility excluding a signal that the other facility has a chance of discovering.

Two Ideas For Publishers

Jul 01 2010 | comment(s)

I have just finished four slides (well, five, if you count the cover) which I will show at ESOF 2010, the "EuroScience Open Forum" which is starting in Torino tomorrow. At ESOF, Sense About Science has organized two interesting sessions. One of them is about Peer Review, and it will discuss the results of a recent survey that SAS conducted on the subject with the help of Elsevier.

First Prize For The Least Appropriate Program Name

Jun 30 2010 | comment(s)

Through a casual browsing of the Arxiv's hep-ph section, I got to read the following title:

"CAMORRA: A C++ Library for Recursive Computation of Particle Scattering Amplitudes"

Authors are R.Kleiss and G. van den Oord. None of which appears Italian by name, so my first reaction to the title (are these people stupid or what?) got tempered by the fact that they may just be ignorant.

Camorra is the name of one of the three main criminal organizations operating in southern Italy. From wikipedia, even a computer-illiterate could learn that

The Camorra is a mafia-like criminal organization [...] It finances itself through drug trafficking/distribution, cigarette

Garrett Lisi's New E8 Paper

Jun 28 2010 | comment(s)

Social networks are a great help for this kind of news: a new paper by a FB friend does not go unnoticed (at least by me) as it once would. I learned today that Garrett Lisi (picture below), the surfer and theoretical physicist, has deposited another paper in the Cornell arxiv. And it looks as a significant addition to his previous studies of the E8 group. He explicitly calls it "a companion" to the previous article, "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything".

The Say Of The Week

Jun 25 2010 | comment(s)

"It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts..."

Sherlock Holmes

2000 Days Of Blogging

Jun 24 2010 | comment(s)

Today is the 2000th day of blogging for me. And this is my 2003rd post!

It all started in December 2004, when I first learned about the existence of a thing called "blog". I had been contacted by Judy Jackson, from the office of public affairs at Fermilab. She wanted me in a project for the 2005 International Year of Physics, called "Quantum Diaries". I was taught that I would have to describe my life as a researcher in experimental particle physics, and little more. I accepted with some doubts -I had already grown wary enough of new work proposals by then, but I knew too little to understand just how big a time investment that would grow to become!-, but soon realized I was enthusiastic about the thing!