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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 Dispensable Discovery

A Dispensable Discovery

May 15 2010 | comment(s)

While around the world particle physicists are working frantically to produce important new results to be shown at ICHEP 2010 -the International Conference on High-Energy Physics, which is held every two years and is arguably the single most important meeting for this branch of science-, new discoveries get claimed in an asynchronous way. And some of them in a very asynchronous way, I should say, since they are based on 40-years-old data.
Scientists, Ye Pedantic Jerks

Scientists, Ye Pedantic Jerks

May 13 2010 | comment(s)

Academics pay a lot of attention to the quality of their writings. It is generally a point of pride to publish flawless documents, and this is felt in scientific disciplines just as much as in literary ones. If I told you how much time the members of a scientific experiment such as CDF at the Tevatron or CMS at CERN (the ones I work in) spend in the review of their articles before these are sent to the publishers, you would be startled.
The ever-growing workload

The ever-growing workload

May 12 2010 | comment(s)

This is going to be a short post where I confess my recent troubles with keeping everything going on at full speed in my life, while the workload constantly grows.

I believe it is a temporary problem -I have experienced the same situation in the past- but I feel swamped by a few things that have piled up. So today, rather than reading on a new physics result or a new article on the arxiv, you are going to find here a list of the things I am not attending in order to write this short post. In random order:

  1. I have a undergraduate thesis to correct.
  2. I also need to write a reference letter for him, by next Sunday.
  3. There is a 100 pages paper in internal review by CDF and I am a member of the review committee.
The Say of the Week - Following the Right Vocation

The Say of the Week - Following the Right Vocation

May 10 2010 | comment(s)

"Why didn't these people follow their true vocation ending in a white-collar office, rather than breaking the balls to whom does Physics ?"

(Anonymous physics researcher from unnamed experiment, upon experiencing endless strings of meaningless objections and inane requests for wording changes  to a paper about to get sent for publication by a bunch of less worthy colleagues).

... And there would be a lot to say about the subject, but I will save it for another post.
ICHEP Blog!

ICHEP Blog!

May 08 2010 | comment(s)

Every two years particle physicists meet at a conference which is just a bit more important, more well-attended, and more prestigious than all the others that pester our agendas every other week. This conference is called ICHEP - the International Conference on High-Energy Physics - and it is usually the favourite and most favourable place where to present or to listen to groundbreaking results, important advancements, thorough review talks.
The typo we craved for

The typo we craved for

May 07 2010 | comment(s)

Courtesy gizmodo:



The typo we had been all waiting for. And there is already who fantasizes about the need for a Large Hardon Condom, to play it safe...

Sorry for the reblogging, but this time I did not resist...