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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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Planck 2009

Planck 2009

May 25 2009 | comment(s)

This morning the Planck 09 conference started at the Auditorium Altinate (see picture, right) in Padova. For a week, theorists and experimentalists will discuss hot topics in a variety of fields, from particle physics to cosmology, to string theory. A PDF file with the program is online.
A new paper in the Arxiv attracted my attention this morning. It is titled "Perturbative QCD effects and the search for a signal at the Tevatron", and is authored by a set of quite distinguished theorists: C.Anastasiou, G.Dissertori, M.Grazzini, F.Stockli, and B.Webber.
Last Tuesday CDF announced their own discovery of the Omega_b baryon, a measurement which creates a controversy with the competing experiment at the Tevatron collider, DZERO. That is because DZERO had already claimed discovery for that particle, almost one year ago, and because the two measurements disagree wildly with each other. Just browse through my past few posts in this column and you will find all the information you need (how lazy can one be with links?).
"I seldom enjoy competition in real life. I find it fun only when I am up against somebody who takes things more seriously than I do."

QDS
In thirty minutes (4 PM Chicago time) a live streaming of the Omega_b discovery by CDF will be broadcast at this link: http://vms-db-srv.fnal.gov/fmi/xsl/VMS_Site_2/000Return/video/r_live.xsl

Please follow it if you are interested in particle physics - Pat Lukens, the main author of the analysis, and a very experienced and skilled physicist who has spent the better part of his life for the good of the CDF experiment, will be discussing this fantastic new analysis for all of us.

In the last few days I indulged in a rather technical description of the checks I made on DZERO's evaluation of the significance of their observation of Omega_b particles. In those occasions I did not discuss either what the Omega_b is, nor what is its relevance, nor the details of how DZERO collected a small but significant sample of events characterized by the production of that ephemeral particle.