Physics

The Mysterious Y(4140)

Quite some time ago I discussed here the tentative Y(4140) resonance  claimed by the CDF collaboration in their Run II data. This was a peak which was found in B-decay data containing a J/Psi signal, a phi meson, and an additional kaon track, and it result ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Feb 13 2013 - 12:02am

In The Beginning...

1:1 In the beginning Newton declared space and time. 1:2 And space was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. 1:3 And Newton said, Let there be force: and there was force. 1:4 And Newton saw the force, that it was good: and Ne ...

Article - Johannes Koelman - Feb 12 2013 - 12:43pm

Light pressure is the best candidate of dark energy

The puzzle of dark energy, the dark cloud of 21st centry physics, is possibly solved. A postdoctorate, Wan-Jiung Hu, solves this puzzle in his book "Theories of Everything by Logic". Wan-Jiung Hu is a MD(National Taiwan University) and PhD(Johns ...

Blog Post - Wan-Jiung Hu - Feb 12 2013 - 10:55pm

The Quote of the Week- Peter Higgs: Inventing an Elementary Particle

I quickly wrote a short paper, "Broken Symmetries, Massless Particles and Gauge Fields", which described how gauge theories may evade the Goldstone theorem, and submitted it to Physics Letters. It was received on 27 July and published 15 Septemb ...

Blog Post - Tommaso Dorigo - Feb 13 2013 - 4:53am

Neutrino Telescopes XV

Every two years physicists and astrophysicists who work in the area of neutrino physics get together in the wonderful setting of Palazzo Franchetti, a historical palace on the Canal Grande in Venice, Italy, to discuss the latest results of experiments and ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Feb 14 2013 - 9:05am

A Century Of Physics In 1.5 Hours

Today I spent the better part of the afternoon in the company of 150 high-school students at the Liceo Fermi in Padova, giving a seminar on particle physics in the context of a project called "Masterclasses" which has been active since 2005 and i ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Apr 15 2013 - 10:03pm

New CMS Results On Dijet Resonances

CMS is one of the two huge detectors built to study the high-energy collisions of protons produced by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. As all previous collider detectors, CMS is a redundant multi-purpose collection of dozens sub-detector components, whic ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Feb 25 2013 - 5:26pm

The Quote of the Week- Limits On Gluinos and Squarks

"To date, there is no evidence for SUSY particles and lower limits on the masses are more than 4 GeV for gluinos and more than 20 GeV for squarks and sleptons." D.H. Perkins, "Introduction to High-Energy Physics", 3rd ed., Addison-Wesl ...

Blog Post - Tommaso Dorigo - Feb 28 2013 - 8:26am

Seeing Muons!

My physics department in Padova is not a huge place, and yet I usually fail to be aware of what goes on around, since I spend all of my time buried inside my office. This morning, though, I had to pass by a meeting room on my way in, and I thus learned of ...

Blog Post - Tommaso Dorigo - Mar 1 2013 - 11:29am

Cosmology in context: A summary of big bang, inflationary cosmology.

The technical details of Big Bang, inflationary cosmology, and selected alternative theories are on offer.  Popular accounts of the big bang theory, cosmic inflation, and the creation of the universe often leave out details a consumer of science would lik ...

Blog Post - Hontas Farmer - Mar 4 2013 - 10:45am