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Reference Letters

Lately I have been writing lots of reference letters for students who are applying to Ph.D. positions...

Highlights From MODE And EUCAIF

After a month of intense travel, which among other things included attendance to the MODE Workshop...

Win A MSCA Post-Doctoral Fellowship!

Applications for MSCA Post-doctoral fellowships are on, and will be so until September 10 this...

The Anomaly That Wasn't: An Example Of Shifting Consensus In Science

Time is a gentleman - it waits patiently. And in physics, as in all exact sciences, problems and...

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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 Say of the Week

The Say of the Week

Sep 12 2009 | comment(s)

"The emission or absorption of a quantum by a nucleus bound in a crystal leads in general to an alteration of the vibrational state of the crystal lattice, which takes up the recoil momentum. On account of the quantization of the internal energy, the crystal can absorb the recoil energy only in discrete amounts. With decreasing temperature the probability of excitation of the internal states decreases more and more, so that for soft gamma rays for a part in the quantum transitions the crystal as a whole takes up the recoil momentum. The quanta emitted or absorbed in this situation undergo practically no energy loss because of the large mass of the crystal, and ideally satisfy the resonance condition".

Rudolf Mossbauer
Are The New Hubble Images Better ?

Are The New Hubble Images Better ?

Sep 11 2009 | comment(s)

New beautiful images from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) have been released recently, and they are, as always, a pleasure to behold. The HST was serviced in a mission by the Space Shuttle Atlantis crew last May, to replace some broken gyroscopes and drained batteries, and perform a number of additional important tasks that will allow operation to continue for many years to come.

Among the new installed instruments the new HST sports an improved wide field camera, WFC3, which promises a significant improvement of the quality of telescope's imaging capabilities.
Part-Time Lover, Part-Time Premier

Part-Time Lover, Part-Time Premier

Sep 10 2009 | comment(s)

Data concerning the parties with 30 young beauties (paid 1450$ each for their time, plus various benefits and gifts) held by the Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi in his residences in Rome and Sardinia, between September 2008 and January 2009, have been disclosed the other day by the provider of the girls, Giancarlo Tarantini. Tarantini is under investigation for several charges (including, it seems, drug abuse and distribution at his own parties), and he is spilling his guts.  We thus learn from him that many of the involved girls allegedly spent the nights at the Premier's house providing sexual favors to their host; the fact appears to be confirmed in at least one case with video and audio recordings taken by escort Patrizia D'Addario.
The Higgs Potential: Source Of All Our Troubles

The Higgs Potential: Source Of All Our Troubles

Sep 10 2009 | comment(s)

The slide below was shown yesterday at an invited talk that Antonio Masiero gave in the University of Bologna, during an open session of the CMS Physics week (see, I am careful to note I am not breaking any rules by showing material relevant to internal CMS business: the session was open!).


Watch Out For Anomalous Couplings In WW Production

Watch Out For Anomalous Couplings In WW Production

Sep 09 2009 | comment(s)

The CDF collaboration has recently released a study of the production of pairs of W bosons in a large bounty of proton-antiproton collisions produced by the Tevatron collider -3.6 inverse femtobarns of them, or roughly 300 trillions, give or take 6%.

The measurement of the production cross section of this clean and rare electroweak process (its absolute rate, that is) is the most precise ever obtained so far, and reaches down to a level of uncertainty which cannot be improved further significantly at the Tevatron, because it is now limited by the uncertainty in the overall integrated luminosity mentioned above.
Rubbia and the Brutalized Gorilla

Rubbia and the Brutalized Gorilla

Sep 08 2009 | comment(s)

Sometimes I come to think this blog is overextended: it happens when I realize it contains more things than I can remember, even ones I would really like to have at my fingertips. I was reminded yesterday of a very funny story which a reader left in the comments thread of a rather meaningless post, and decided I should make a separate post of it, since it made my day reading it and it might make yours too...

The story was told by Leon Lederman in an introduction to Carlo Rubbia in the proceedings of a conference held in 1984 in Santa Fe:

"... Now I have some interesting news, a story that is at the least apocryphal. It concerns the heroic contestant in one of those ancient trials by strength which are so natural for our "Carlo". This trial was