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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...

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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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Analysis Of A Roulette Strategy

Analysis Of A Roulette Strategy

Oct 17 2009 | comment(s)

As Hank explains in a recent article, when he visits a Casino he plays the Roulette. His simple strategy consists in betting on a single colour, doubling the bet every time he loses; when he wins, he starts back with the minimum bet.
Supernatural Coincidences And The Look-Elsewhere Effect

Supernatural Coincidences And The Look-Elsewhere Effect

Oct 16 2009 | comment(s)

Have you ever caught yourself wondering, upon observing a seemingly utterly unlikely coincidence, whether there was anything supernatural at work that made it happen ? I would guess that all of us, even the most rational thinkers, have caressed that thought for a minute, at least once. A few typical examples can be given of situations which one apparently fails to ascribe to natural causes:

1) Grandma dreams of her deceased husband spelling a sequence of numbers, and the following day she sees the same sequence coming out at Lotto. Was grandpa trying to let her win a large sum ? It will be quite hard to convince her otherwise.
A Quadrillion Collisions

A Quadrillion Collisions

Oct 13 2009 | comment(s)

Americans, but in general scientists, and science-lovers of any country, should be proud of the achievements of the Tevatron collider, the 2-TeV proton-antiproton collider build over a quarter of a century ago under the prairie of Batavia (IL), and which is still the world's most powerful, and may I say successful, particle accelerator ever built by humans.
The Say of the Week: Strumia on Backward Causation and Communism

The Say of the Week: Strumia on Backward Causation and Communism

Oct 13 2009 | comment(s)

"Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernencko: these three premiers of Soviet Union unexpectedly died around 1984, such that Gorbachev could lead the process that ended with the fall of Soviet Union, such that the US congress stopped funding the SSC, such that the Higgs was not discovered.

According to the new theory of backwards causation, you should be proud of having destroyed communism."
Overbye on Backward Causality

Overbye on Backward Causality

Oct 12 2009 | comment(s)

Many thanks to Dennis for linking, from the NYT site, an article I wrote one year ago to comment a crackpotty paper by an otherwise esteemed scientist.
The essay just appeared on the New York Times site is excellent, as always with Overbye, but it is also way more balanced than my rather vitriolic attack on the theory of backward causation and, in particular, the idea that one should use the Large Hadron Collider to test it by deciding to run or not to run based on the turn of a card.
New! My Paper On Solving The Omega B Controversy

New! My Paper On Solving The Omega B Controversy

Oct 12 2009 | comment(s)

The web site of the Cornell preprint archive, arxiv.org, says it best: successful submissions to the preprint archive are a source of considerable pride (darn it, the page with the exact statement is only available just after you submit a paper, so I cannot quote it literally here since my browser has by now forgotten it!).