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The Strange Case Of The Monotonous Running Average

These days I am putting the finishing touches on a hybrid algorithm that optimizes a system (a...

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...

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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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The Quote Of The Week - The Nonsensical Hypothesis Of Quarks

The Quote Of The Week - The Nonsensical Hypothesis Of Quarks

Jan 09 2014 | comment(s)

At the 1962 Rochester conference in Geneva, the prediction that a particle later called the Omega minus should exist, already proposed in a paper by Glashow and Sakurai, was not considered important enough to be mentioned in any invited or contributed talk. It was mentioned in a comment from the floor by Gell-Mann. The paper proposing the existence of quarks was accepted by Physics Letters only because it had Gell-Mann's name on it. The editor said, "The paper looks crazy, but if I accept it and it is nonsense, everyone will blame Gell-Mann and not Physics Letters. If I reject it and it turns out to be right, I will be ridiculed."

Harry Lipkin, "Quark Models and Quark Phenomenology", in "The Rise of the Standard Model", Cambridge UP 1997
The Sacred Sword - Radioactive Contamination At Fermilab In 1986

The Sacred Sword - Radioactive Contamination At Fermilab In 1986

Jan 07 2014 | comment(s)

In a guest post written three years ago Giorgio Chiarelli told us the story of how the CDF detector saw its first proton-antiproton collisions, during the night of October 13th 1985. It was a very important moment for the history of the collaboration, the start of a data collection campaign that would last over a quarter of a century. Below I wish to tell you the story of one of the worst radiological incidents in the history of the experiment, which happened a few months after those first collisions were recorded.

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Two Papers By DZERO On Jet Physics

Two Papers By DZERO On Jet Physics

Dec 31 2013 | comment(s)

The DZERO experiment is one of the two multi-purpose detectors that have collected 1.96 TeV proton-antiproton collisions at the Fermilab Tevatron collider until two years ago, when the machine was decommissioned.

Experiments of this kind out-live the demise of the hardware, since the extraction of precise physics measurements from the large datasets accumulated may take several years to complete. And in fact, it is not a surprise to see two new preprints in the Arxiv (here and here) which describe in detail the experimental techniques that the collaboration uses to extract jet physics results from the data.
Highlights From A Chess Tournament

Highlights From A Chess Tournament

Dec 24 2013 | comment(s)

The XVIth international chess tournament "Citta' di Padova" ended last Sunday with the victory of GM Kiril Georgiev, who got 7 points out of 9 games. The tournament saw the participation of 63 players from 13 countries, with a total of 11 grandmasters and 13 international masters, plus nine other Fide titled players.

I participated in the event and scored a good 4.5/9, winning four games and losing four. Below I am showing some salient points from a few of my games.
George Zweig, a Renaissance Man

George Zweig, a Renaissance Man

Dec 23 2013 | comment(s)

I met George Zweig at a conference in Crete last Summer. He impressed me with the multidisciplinarity of his interests and his quite entertaining career. He has a degree in mathematics, and did quite a bit of experimental physics work before finally turning to theoretical physics; but he did not stay there for long...

But I do not want to summarize more of the interesting life of Zweig, since there is now an interview with George on the online newsletter of the physics department of CERN, which is quite detailed and fascinating, and deserves a read. Enjoy!
The Quote Of The Week - Physics Analysis Organization

The Quote Of The Week - Physics Analysis Organization

Dec 19 2013 | comment(s)

"The senior signs the paper, the post-doc thinks, and the grad student executes"

F.S., explaining how the typical nucleus of analysis group in HEP works.