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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...

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...

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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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The Quote Of The Week: The Pre-Discovery Of The Anomalous Magnetic Moment

The Quote Of The Week: The Pre-Discovery Of The Anomalous Magnetic Moment

Feb 15 2010 | comment(s)

"In 1934, L.E.Kinsler at the California Institute of technology was studying the Zeeman effect as a means for evaluating the charge-to-mass ratio of the electron, e/m. The deduction of e/m from the measured wavelength differences involves, in addition to a high-precision measurement of the magnetic field, a knowledge of the way in which the individual electron spins and orbital angular momenta are coupled. However, there are certain quantities or combinations of quantities that are independent of the nature of the coupling.
Constraints On The Higgs Mass From The Muon Anomaly

Constraints On The Higgs Mass From The Muon Anomaly

Feb 14 2010 | comment(s)

One of the positive side-effects of preparing a seminar is being forced to get up-to-date with the latest experimental and theoretical developments on the topic. And this is of particular benefit to lazy bums like myself, who prefer to spend their time playing online chess than reading arxiv preprints.

It happened last week, in the course of putting together a meaningful discussion of the state of the art in global electroweak fits to standard model observables, and their implications for the unknown mass of the Higgs boson: by skimming the hep-ph folder I found a very recent paper by a colleague in Padova, which I had shamefully failed to notice in the last couple of careless visits.
Safe Internet Day

Safe Internet Day

Feb 12 2010 | comment(s)

This morning, upon leaving Brussels to go back home after my seminar in Louvain-la-Neuve, my attention was caught by a big green banner hanging from a tall building at Place Schuman. It said "Safe Internet Day" and below, in smaller fonts, "think before you blog". I found it inspiring.

A blog, if used correctly, is a very nice tool which enhances one's possibility to express one's ideas, or to do scientific outreach, as in my case. It may also be used for self-promotion at times (and the opportunity does not escape me, although I try to self-contain these outbursts). But a blog, if it attracts traffic, may become also a dangerous instrument, which must be handled with care.
Higgs Seminar For Sale

Higgs Seminar For Sale

Feb 10 2010 | comment(s)

This afternoon I am leaving to Belgium. I have been invited by the Université Catholique de Louvain to give a seminar on the status and the future of the Higgs boson searches at the Tevatron collider. This was a good pretext to sit down and learn the latest details of the analyses carried out by CDF and DZERO, and to do some real work of my own, mainly to understand what are the discovery or exclusion prospects for the Higgs in the US in the next few years. I have somehow described my conclusions in a recent article.
And CMS, In The Meantime...

And CMS, In The Meantime...

Feb 07 2010 | comment(s)

Earlier today I reported about the publication of a paper by a non-professional physicist, Carl Brannen. Now I have to do the same for a paper -the first one in a long and groundbreaking series, you can bet- from the CMS collaboration, one of the two main experiments at the CERN Large Hadron Collider.
When Amateurs Get Published

When Amateurs Get Published

Feb 07 2010 | comment(s)

This just in: Carl Brannen (here his blog) got a paper on gravitation published in a scientific magazine. Carl, who is the typical amateur who many "established scientists" in the blogosphere have labeled a crackpot in the last few years, does not actually fit the bill very well: he is a deep thinker who knows the literature of what he studies, and the fact that he is not salaried by a research institute means as little as this: he does it for Science, and not for a pay.