Physics

Majorana Fermion: We Found The God Particle, Why Is The 'Angel Particle' Still Missing?

Majorana fermions, particles that act as their own antiparticle and were first hypothesized by Italian physicist Ettore Majorana in 1937, have not been detected after all. A 2017 report of the discovery of a particular kind of Majorana fermion, the chiral ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 13 2020 - 10:24am

Machine Learning For Jets: A Workshop In New York

The third "Machine Learning for Jets" workshop is ongoing these days at the Kimmel centre of New York University, a nice venue overlooking Washington Square park in downtown Manhattan. I came to attend it and remain up-to-date with the most adva ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Jan 16 2020 - 4:17pm

Anomaly Detection: When Old Statistics School May Still Beat Super-Duper Machine Learning

One of the most suprising results of the "Machine Learning for Jets" (but really, for particle physics in general) workshop I attended in New York City two weeks ago was the outcome of a challenge that the organizers had proposed to the particip ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Jan 27 2020 - 5:36pm

The Plot Of The Week- Narrowing CP Violation Down

The ATLAS Collaboration has released last week the results of a careful analysis of a large dataset of proton-proton collisions acquired during Run 2 of the Large Hadron Collider. This is a measurement of CP violation effects in the system of B hadrons. A ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Jan 30 2020 - 5:12pm

Alvin Tollestrup, Father Of The Tevatron, Dies

The Tevatron collider, the giant marvel accelerator built at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in the eighties and operated there for over thirty years, until its demise in 2012, lost one of its fathers the other day, as Alvin Tollestrup passed aw ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Feb 12 2020 - 10:18am

Three And A Half Muons

A few days ago I received from my esteemed colleague Massimo Passera, a theorist and an INFN director of research in the Padova section where I also work, a draft of a new article he produced with his colleagues Antonio Masiero and Paride Paradisi, which ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Feb 14 2020 - 12:18pm

What Are Gravitational Waves and Why Do They Matter?

W aves of geometry in four-dimensional space-time, that is what gravitational waves are.  The very definition of distance between points in space-time changes as these waves pass.   The objects in the space do not move but space itself changes momentarily ...

Blog Post - Hontas Farmer - Feb 15 2020 - 4:22pm

Optimizing The Geometry Of A Muon-Electron Scattering Experiment

Tomorrow morning the Cornell arXiv will publish the preprint of a long scientific article, the result of 4.5 months of painstaking work by yours truly. So I thought I would give you a preview of its contents. Of course, it will take more than a single post ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Feb 24 2020 - 4:36pm

Lattice QCD Calculations Disprove Anomaly In Muon Gyromagnetic Ratio

A new long article which appeared on the arXiv preprint repository last week is sending ripples around the world of particle physics phenomenology, as its main result-if proven correct- will completely wipe off the table the one and only long-standing inco ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Mar 4 2020 - 12:16pm

The Virus That Turns Physicists Into Crackpots

First off, let me say I do not wish to sound disrespectful to anybody here, leave alone my colleagues, to most of which goes my full esteem and respect (yes, not all of them, doh). Yet, I feel compelled to write today about a sociological datum I have paid ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Mar 24 2020 - 1:30pm