The Say of the Week
An expert is a man who has made all of the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field.
Niels Bohr
From hammock to armchair
You haven't seen any new hardcore physics posts entering this blog in recent weeks. Reason is a new role in my professional life, combined with a new science project that I have started in my spare…
An Exercise In Relativistic Kinematics
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…
Nature Has A Tendency To Reduce Complexity
There exists a tendency in nature to reduce complexity via modularization. This tendency grows when more modules become available. Finally this tendency enables nature to create intelligent and very…
The Verdict: Smolin Vs Susskind Final Part 4
This is the last of the four part series about the Edge discussion between Lee Smolin and Leonard Susskind.
I previously discussed the physics and the philosophical issues. You will have by now…
ITER fusion: Governments taking a hard look at budget overruns and delays
It's become so commonplace for large science endeavors to be over budget and long-delayed that both budgets and time frames seem almost meaningless. The James Webb Space Telescope might as…
The Plot Of The Week - ZZ Cross Section, CDF, Circa 2010
A new result for the production cross section of Z boson pairs in proton-antiproton collisions at the 2-TeV Tevatron collider is now public, thanks to the efforts of the CDF collaboration. The…
Birth of the Universe from “Nothing” - Big Bang Simulation
Birth of the Universe from the Zero Energy State
1) There was a pair creation of positive and negative energy in the early universe.
2) The total energy of universe is 0.
Stephen Hawking and…
Energy and Intensity: Analogy Needed
In the past weeks I have been writing a piece about the Large Hadron Collider for a science popularization magazine, and I found myself squeezing my brain for a good analogy to the work of particle…
SUSY's Apology For Not Showing Up
Teaching a subnuclear physics course is a quite refreshing experience.
In general, much of the stuff that one has learned through years of sweating on books slowly degrades and becomes "fuzzy". That…
