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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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Physics Forecasts For 2011

Physics Forecasts For 2011

Dec 26 2010 | comment(s)

Betting a grand on the existence or not of new physics is cool, but one does not need to be that daring (or to be that daring every other day) to enjoy the game of making predictions for what the fundamental research in experimental particle physics will discover or measure in a future close enough that we can reasonably expect to experience ourselves. So here I am, at the end of this eventful 2010, to look forward rather than backward, with no additional grand to invest but some insight to use, some reputation to waste, and a bit of humour to stuff between the lines.
Rumors About An Old Rumor

Rumors About An Old Rumor

Dec 25 2010 | comment(s)

Some unforeseen Christmas-vigil blog activity bringing here a few visitors more than average was traced today back to BBC News, who discussed the 2010 science highlights here.

The incoming link is in this paragraph:

The evolving role of the blogosphere in science came to the fore as particle physicists were preparing to gather in Paris for their annual conference. Internet rumours suggested that the US Tevatron particle smasher had seen hints of the elusive Higgs boson.

If That Were A Higgs At 200 GeV...

If That Were A Higgs At 200 GeV...

Dec 23 2010 | comment(s)

A reader of this blog asked in the comments thread of a recent piece the following interesting question:

"Assuming mH = 201 GeV/c2, how many Higgses shoud have been produced at
the Tevatron by now with an integated luminosity of 10 inverse
femtobarns? And how many H -> ZZ -> µµµµ would one expect to see?"
10 Inverse Femtobarns: Celebration Time At Fermilab!

10 Inverse Femtobarns: Celebration Time At Fermilab!

Dec 21 2010 | comment(s)

As sure as death and taxes, and as timely as a Swiss watch, the Tevatron collider never ceases to awe us. Well into its twentysixth year of life, the aged and celebrated proton-antiproton collider sitting just a few meters underground in the west Chicago suburbs hit the mark of 10 inverse femtobarns of collisions delivered to the core of the CDF and DZERO detectors.

10 inverse femtobarns! Ten inverse femtobarns of proton-antiproton collisions is a HELL of a lot of them. Plus, you should multiply that number by two, since the same number of collisions happened inside two different collision areas -those manned by the two competing collaborations.
The Say of the Week

The Say of the Week

Dec 20 2010 | comment(s)

An expert is a man who has made all of the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field.
Niels Bohr
An Exercise In Relativistic Kinematics

An Exercise In Relativistic Kinematics

Dec 19 2010 | comment(s)

A faithful reader of this blog has been asking me for answers to some of the 42 questions which were given at an exam for particle physics researcher wannabes in Italy in 2005. I already provided some answers in a separate post a few months back, but the reader asked for an answer to some specific exercises which I had not bothered to deal with here. I will do so now.