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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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The ATLAS 2-TeV ZZ Signal Might Be A Techni-Rho

The ATLAS 2-TeV ZZ Signal Might Be A Techni-Rho

Jun 14 2015 | comment(s)

I apologize to you, dear reader, for not having written yet about the 2.5 standard deviation excess that the ATLAS collaboration has recently found in diboson final states at 2 TeV in the 2012 8-TeV data. I thought it was interesting, but for some reason the distributions published by the experiment did not stimulate my fantasy enough to trigger an article here. Or maybe, it was because they got published at a time when I had too much on my plate to deal with it...

Those Three Higgs Events Piling Up At 1.8 TeV

Those Three Higgs Events Piling Up At 1.8 TeV

Jun 09 2015 | comment(s)

Among the many things that CMS and ATLAS physicists are looking forward to checking up, using the data that the LHC is starting to deliver from 13 TeV proton-proton collisions, one is the WH resonance signal that CMS found in a recent analysis. Mind you, "signal" here is a misnomer: what was seen was most probably a insignificant fluctuation of the background; yet we must keep our mind open to interpretation changes.

The search I am talking about is one CMS did for boosted Higgs bosons recoiling against boosted W bosons, in a "back-to-back" topology (paper is here).
Green Rays: Rare, From The Sun; And From The Moon ?

Green Rays: Rare, From The Sun; And From The Moon ?

Jun 05 2015 | comment(s)

The light we receive from the sun is composed of all visible frequencies, among others, and it therefore appears white to our natural detection system - the human eye. Apparently, evolution caused us to develop a vision which works best at the center of the frequency spectrum emitted by the Sun. 

That notwithstanding, I am sure that if you ask the question "what colour is the Sun" to the average Joe, you will get an equal share of "white" and "yellow", and maybe some "red" answers. Besides, who among us has never painted a red Sun in a blue sky as a child ? 
Highlights Of The INFN School Of Statistics For Physicists

Highlights Of The INFN School Of Statistics For Physicists

May 29 2015 | comment(s)

The second infn school of statistics took place this week in the nice "green island" of Ischia, in the gulf of Naples, Italy. Organized by the INFN section of Naples, the school aims at training Ph.D. students and post-graduates in the foundations and the applications of the statistical methods most used nowadays in particle physics, nuclear physics, and astrophysics.

Highest Energy Collisions ? Not In My Book

Highest Energy Collisions ? Not In My Book

May 22 2015 | comment(s)

Yesterday I posed a question - Are the first collisions recorded by the LHC running at 13 TeV the highest-energy ever produced by mankind with subatomic particles ? It was a tricky one, as usual, meant to think about the matter.

I received several tentative answer in the comments thread, and thus answered there. I paste the text here as it is of some interest to some of you and I wish it does not go overlooked.

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Dear all, 
Bang !! 13 TeV - The Highest Energy Ever Achieved By Mankind ?!

Bang !! 13 TeV - The Highest Energy Ever Achieved By Mankind ?!

May 21 2015 | comment(s)

The LHC has finally started to produce 13-TeV proton-proton collisions!

The picture below shows one such collision, as recorded by the CMS experiment today. The blue boxes show the energy recorded in the calorimeter, which measures particle energy by "destroying" them as they interact with the dense layers of matter that this device is made up of; the yellow curves show tracks reconstructed by the ionization deposits of charged particles left in the silicon detector layers of the inner tracker.