FAQ | Register Now | Sign In

Subscribe to the newsletter

[x]

Stay in touch with the scientific world!

Holiday Chess Riddle

During Christmas holidays I tend to indulge in online chess playing a bit too much, wasting several...

Why Measure The Top Quark Production Cross Section?

As part of my self-celebrations for XX years of blogging activities, I am reposting here (very)...

The Buried Lottery

As part of my self-celebrations for having survived 20 years of blogging (the anniversary was a...

Twenty Years Blogging

Twenty years ago today I got access for the first time to the interface that allowed me to publish...

Tommaso Dorigo

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 »

PhD Positions For Chinese Students in Padova

Nov 14 2014 | comment(s)

I am using my blog to advertise the opening of PhD positions in Padova University, to work at several research projects and obtain a PhD in Physics. These are offered to Chinese students through the China Scolarship Council. More information is available at this link.
If you are a bright Chinese student who speaks at least some English and is willing to spend three years working in data analysis for Higgs physics in the CMS experiment, I will take you - so what are you waiting for ? Applications close soon!

Below is a table with deadlines and information.

A Picture More Awe-Inspiring Than The One Of The Surface Of Comet Gerasimenko

Nov 13 2014 | comment(s)

This one is definitely too juicy to ignore - I need to join the crowd of bystanders-in-awe.
As you may have heard, ESA's ROSETTA spacecraft successfully landed yesterday on the solid nucleus of comet 67/P, Churyumov-Gerasimenko - a 2.5 mile long conglomerate of rock and ice. I refrain from giving detail of that enormous achievement for humankind, because I rather want to comment on this rather funny twist of the whole story. But still let's first enjoy at least one nice picture of the surface of that distant solar system body...

Natural Selection And Homeopathy

Nov 11 2014 | comment(s)

Forget the Higgs Boson, the Landing on Comets, Missions to Mars, the Genome Project, Nanostructures and all that. This start of this new millennium looks like the dark ages to me if I have to gauge it from discussions I overhear in public places.

A Planetary System Pictured By ALMA !

Nov 06 2014 | comment(s)

Just... WOW. I did not expect this to happen in my lifetime (and no, I do not expect to die tomorrow either). The Atacama Large Millimeter Array in Chile has pictured a forming planetary system in a young star surrounded by a complex nebula of hot gas.I still remember the Scientific American article I read some 25 years ago about planet formation simulations, which showed how computer models of planetesimals rotating in a cloud of gas around a star. The planetesimals would pick up matter around as they swept the orbital plane, and in the matter of millions of years acquire a planetary mass and "clean up" the area around. Now we are seeing this before us, in the picture below offered by ALMA.

ATLAS Seeks Invisible Particles With Top Quarks

Nov 04 2014 | comment(s)

Results of a new search for single top production and large missing energy have been published by the ATLAS collaboration in a recent preprint. I think it is worthwhile to have a look at the idea behind this new search, as the signature of invisible particles produced in LHC collisions and escaping the detectors is important in many of the current and future investigations of beyond-the-standard-model physics.

Another Collider Physics Source

Oct 28 2014 | comment(s)

Just a short entry to mention that the blog of my colleague Michael Schmitt, a professor at Northwestern University and a member of the CMS collaboration, is as active as ever, with several very interesting and well-written pieces recently published: