I was on a plane to Valencia yesterday at the time when Paolo spoke in the Main Auditorium at CERN, and got approved our very first physics result with CMS collider data.
Okay -with a small group we had already produced an approved plot of phi-->KK decays last December, but this is a real, full-fledged analysis! I will talk more about it in the next few days.
A lot has been going on recently in blogs I sporadically visit (I am not a big reader myself). I thus thought I'd put together a list of valuable links here.
"I love work, it fascinates me; I can sit and watch it for hours".
J. K. Jerome
I just read a
very nice article by Nature's Zeeya Merali, and I thought I would link it from this blog. It discusses in detail several aspects of the sociology of the very large communities of particle physics experiments taking place at CERN.
The CDF Collaboration blessed yesterday afternoon the results of a search for massive Gravitons decaying into pairs of Z bosons. And it is a startling new result!
Usually after a blessing (which is the result of a collaboration-wide presentation when the analysis is given a final scrutiny) the results are not immediately made public: this non-written rule has the purpose of allowing the analysis authors to be the first to present the results at a conference or other public event. But the rule written in the CDF bylaws, on the other hand, say that after a blessing the result is public, so for this time I will stick to the written one, and fair play be darned this time... The chances to announce what might be the first evidence of gravitons is too appealing!
The formulation of a fun physics problem with practical -and pleasant- applications occurred to me yesterday. I am currently spending a week in Madrid with my family, and we have chosen a very nice hotel in the suburbs, sacrificing travel time to the center for comfort. Among other things, the hotel offers a nice pool with several water jets along the sides. These are meant to allow you to swim against the water stream, so that you keep the same position as you push yourself against the stream.
A Great Year For Experiment Design
Living At The Polar Circle
Conferences Good And Bad, In A Profit-Driven Society
USERN: 10 Years Of Non-Profit Action Supporting Science Education And Research
