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The Problem With Peer Review

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

Interna

In the past few years my activities on this site - but I would say more in general, as the same...

The Probability Density Function: A Known Unknown

Perhaps the most important thing to get right from the start, in most statistical problems, is...

Summer Lectures In AI

Winter is not over yet, but I am already busy fixing the details of some conferences, schools,...

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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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How Wrong Can Lubos Be ?

How Wrong Can Lubos Be ?

Dec 09 2011 | comment(s)

Every once in a while Lubos pleases with one of his straight-leg tackles, as he deals with stuff he shouldn't be a-messing with (I am still giggling at an incident of a few years ago, when he publically apologized after a week of nonsense). Today it's one of those blessed moments.
And Another Three-Sigma Evidence Of New Physics Goes...

And Another Three-Sigma Evidence Of New Physics Goes...

Dec 09 2011 | comment(s)

It is so annoyingly sweet to be right, when being right means that one's job is not going to become more exciting in the near future... Today CDF published their analysis of CP violation in the Bs sector, where a very exciting three-sigma deviation from the Standard Model predictions had been a bit prematurely and uncautiously claimed by a group of phenomenologists in 2008.
Fundamental Glossary For The Higgs Broadcast

Fundamental Glossary For The Higgs Broadcast

Dec 09 2011 | comment(s)

As everybody knows, next Tuesday we will be treated with a CERN webcast of the analysis results on the Higgs boson searches by ATLAS and CMS. I imagine many of you will want to tune in, but fear you will not grasp much given the typically technical jargon that physicists use to communicate the details of their analyses.

So I thought I would provide here a very short glossary of terms you are likely to hear, and which you might have a hard time understanding correctly. Let me see if I can do a decent job.

Waiting For December 13th

Waiting For December 13th

Dec 07 2011 | comment(s)

It is by now public that Rolf Heuer, the Director General of CERN, in announcing for December 13th two back-to-back talks of the CMS and ATLAS experiments on their Higgs search results with 2011 data, warned that the results might not be conclusive yet. Besides, nobody really could expect them to be, since the sensitivity expected by both ATLAS and CMS in the still not excluded region of the Higgs mass, with 5/fb of data per experiment and 7 TeV running conditions, ranges from 2 to 4 standard deviations in the rosiest circumstances.
Alejandro Rivero: Fermion Mass Coincidences And Other Fun Ideas

Alejandro Rivero: Fermion Mass Coincidences And Other Fun Ideas

Dec 04 2011 | comment(s)

The text below was graciously written for this blog by Alejandro Rivero (below),  a friend who has contributed to this blog other times in the past. His theoretical ideas are off the mainstream, but in a way which makes them interesting to me. I hope some of you will appreciate reading about the whole thing in summary here - Alejandro has a few papers out which you may want to read if you are specifically interested in the matter.

Higgs Expectations

Higgs Expectations

Dec 02 2011 | comment(s)

Update: I am keeping out of this, but you may well be interested in reading what Gibbs, Woit, and Motl have to say about recent leaks on the ATLAS and CMS results. So I hope I won't be crucified for three general links now!

Update 2: And it is now public that a seminar at CERN will be given by ATLAS and CMS on December 13th. So the wait is almost over, officially...

I have not written in a while - a full week. This is uncharacteristic enough that I owe you some sort of explanation.