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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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One in a hundred

One in a hundred

May 18 2009 | comment(s)

The swine flu is spreading silently and slowly throughout the World, but it does not make headlines any more -or not yet again, at least. So far, a total of 8565 cases have been reported in five continents, and 73 people have died of it. The last death reported is a 55-years-old teacher in New York, who passed away after a five-day respiratory crisis.

This influenza is not as deadly as initially thought, if we look at the numbers: given the above numbers we obtain a death rate of less than one in a hundred -or, to be precise, 8.52+-0.99 per mille, where the uncertainty given is just statistical.
Nit-Picking On The Omega_b Baryon: Part II

Nit-Picking On The Omega_b Baryon: Part II

May 17 2009 | comment(s)

In a previous article here I considered from a statistical standpoint the signal of Omega_b candidate decays extracted by the DZERO collaboration in a large dataset of proton-antiproton collisions -the ones produced by today's most powerful hadron collider, the Tevatron at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.
Play Against the Physicist!

Play Against the Physicist!

May 16 2009 | comment(s)

Tired of reading about science ?
In need of a boost to your ego ?
You think you are smarter than me ?
Can you play chess at a reasonable level ? Or, do you have a chess program and you don't mind cheating ?

If you answered "yes" to the above questions, why don't you try to beat at chess a tenured particle physicist with a Ph.D. ? I am willing to take your challenge.
Nit-Picking On The Omega_b Discovery

Nit-Picking On The Omega_b Discovery

May 14 2009 | comment(s)

A first observation of the Omega_b baryon -a quite exotic particle composed of a bottom quark and two strange quarks- has been recently published by the DZERO collaboration. Their paper claims to observe the so-far-unseen particle in 1.3 inverse femtobarns of Run II data (about a hundred trillion proton-antiproton collisions, that is).

The claim is based on the signal they find, 17.8 fitted events making a peak in the reconstructed mass distribution, a signal whose significance is computed to exceed five standard deviations: 5.4 of them, to be precise.
Is Austria Leaving CERN ?

Is Austria Leaving CERN ?

May 11 2009 | comment(s)

With an unexpected move, the Austrian Minister of Research and Science, Johannes Hahn, announced last Friday that he intends to put an end to the 50-year-long participation of Austria to CERN.

Such a move is hard to understand, in light of the great prospects of physics that the start-up of LHC will bring at the end of this year. Losing membership to CERN would mean a downgrade of Austrian scientists in all the projects they are involved, and it would be detrimental to the experiments, to the lab, and to particle physics in general, but most of all it would be a catastrophe for Austrian research.
A Sunday Afternoon in New York

A Sunday Afternoon in New York

May 11 2009 | comment(s)

On my way back to CERN from Fermilab (yes, I am betting on two tables at a time these days, as our Poker-addict friend Garth Sundem suggests), I made a 7-hour stopover in New York. Originally this was meant to save money to my employer, because other combinations costed more than the Swiss ticket I found. But I made virtue of necessity, and organized a meeting with my friend Peter Woit in the West Village. It turned out that I picked the right day for my visit.