Physics

Slowly but surely, because it is a good idea, the Quantum Randi Challenge (QRC) generates interest behind the curtains. Some think that because of this, it is all over, but they are mistaken. Several…

There is a “Carnival of Cosmology: Dark Energy”; here is my contribution: I will discuss the public acceptance of dark energy (1), then I explain that dark energy is crazy but also that the crazy…

The following text has been offered as a followup of the Higgs observation by the LHC experiments, which finds a signal at a mass compatible with the pre-discovery predictions made some time ago by…

"Given that the search for the Higgs took some 45 years, tens of thousands of scientists and engineers, billions of dollars, not to mention numerous divorces, huge amounts of sleep deprivation, tens…

As I explained yesterday, I am in the process of receiving payment for a few bets on possible discoveries at the LHC. Two such bets were on between me and Tony Smith, a long time reader of this blog…

Has LHC observed "the" Higgs boson or do we have to deal with something more exotic? After the seminar held on July the 4th at Cern, many online newspapers have published titles reporting the "…

I cannot resist stealing the picture below, courtesy "IoNonFaccioNiente", the blog of Paolo Valente. Some context for foreigners is needed: the Italian government, in a rather untimely and shocking…

Want to get into a bar fight at a physics conference? Argue that quantum mechanics is the best way to predict outcomes. Or argue the opposite. A new paper argues that quantum mechanics is close to…

The path of the LHC experiments to the successful observation of a Higgs boson has not been the smoothest I could think of, with delays in construction, incidents, and the like; but we are finally…

I realize I owe an apology to my ATLAS colleagues. In a post-Higgs-announcement article where I was listing some random "post-mortem" considerations, I wrote a paragraph which could be read as an…