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On A Roll

What? Another boring chess game?Buzz off, this is my blog, and if I feel like posting a chess game...

When The Attack Plays Itself

After a very intense day at work, I sought some relaxation in online blitz chess today. And the...

Toponium Found By CMS!

The highest-mass subnuclear particle ever observed used to the the top quark. Measured for the...

The Problem With Peer Review

In a world where misinformation, voluntary or accidental, reigns supreme; in a world where lies...

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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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A SUSY Edge Signal ? CMS Sees A 2.6 Sigma Excess !

A SUSY Edge Signal ? CMS Sees A 2.6 Sigma Excess !

Aug 02 2014 | comment(s)

The other day I wrote a post reporting of the lowered expectations of SUSY enthusiasts, who now apparently look forward to seeing 2-sigma effects in the next Run data of the CMS and ATLAS collaborations. That would keep their hope going, apparently.

I would have no problem letting them wait for late 2015, when the first inverse femtobarns of 13 TeV collisions will have been given a look at. But another thing happened today which made me change my mind - a colleague noted in the comments thread of that article that the LHC experiments appear to not publish their 2- and 3-sigma excesses when they see them, waiting for more data that "wipes out" the fluctuation. This is a strong (and probably unsupported) claim!
Reassuring SUSY Seekers

Reassuring SUSY Seekers

Aug 01 2014 | comment(s)

This morning at the ICNFP 2014 conference in Kolympari (Crete) the floor was taken by Abdelhak Djouadi, who gave a very nice overview of the theoretical implications of the Higgs boson discovery, especially exploring the status of Supersymmetry models.

Djouadi explained how even if the average mass of sparticles is being pushed up in surviving models of Supersymmetry -both because of the negative result of direct searches and because of the effect of hardwiring in the theoretical models the knowledge of a "heavy" lightest scalar particle, which sits at 125 GeV- there is reason to be optimistic. He explained that for stop quarks, it is the geometric mean of their masses that has to be high, but the lightest one may be laying well below the TeV.

"Extraordinary Claims, The 0.000029% Solution" And The 38 MeV Boson AT ICNFP 2014

Jul 31 2014 | comment(s)

Yesterday I gave a lecture at the 3rd International Conference on New Frontiers in Physics, which is going on in kolympari (Crete). I spoke critically about the five-sigma criterion that is nowadays the accepted standard in particle physics and astrophysics for discovery claims.

My slides, as usual, are quite heavily written, which is a nuisance if you are sitting at the conference trying to follow my speech, but it becomes an asset if you are reading them by yourself post-mortem. You can find them here (pdf) and here (ppt) .

More On The Alleged WW Excess From The LHC

More On The Alleged WW Excess From The LHC

Jul 28 2014 | comment(s)

This is just a short update on the saga of the anomalous excess of W-boson-pair production that the ATLAS and CMS collaborations have reported in their 7-TeV and 8-TeV proton-proton collision data. A small bit of information which I was unaware of, and which can be added to the picture.

A Useful Approximation For The Tail Of A Gaussian

A Useful Approximation For The Tail Of A Gaussian

Jul 26 2014 | comment(s)

This is just a short post to report about a useful paper I found by preparing for a talk I will be giving next week at the 3rd International Conference on New Frontiers in Physics, in the pleasant setting of the Orthodox Academy of Crete, near Kolympari.

My talk will be titled "Extraordinary Claims: the 0.000029% Solution", making reference to the 5-sigma "discovery threshold" that has become a well-known standard for reporting the observation of new effects or particles in high-energy physics and astrophysics.
True And False Discoveries: How To Tell Them Apart

True And False Discoveries: How To Tell Them Apart

Jul 22 2014 | comment(s)

Many new particles and other new physics signals claimed in the last twenty years were later proven to be spurious effects, due to background fluctuations or unknown sources of systematic error. The list is long, unfortunately - and longer than the list of particles and effects that were confirmed to be true by subsequent more detailed or more statistically-rich analysis.