Physics

I am quite proud today to announce the publication of a new physics result from the CMS experiment: maybe not a groundbreaking result, yet one to which I contributed directly, and the first full-…

Lesson of the day: if the moderator falls asleep, the loquacious speaker will take advantage of it and will not stop talking. Net result: the coffee break remains a chimeric dream.

Today I am attending a conference on the communication of Physics, at Frascati. They invited me there to present this blog, and discuss my experience with it. I spent last night trying to put…

In two years the Higgs boson will be close to discovery, and its mass already known, or the particle will be already in the trash bin. That is the single line which best summarizes the scenarios I…

While answering a comment in another recent post, I was struck by a thought I have had other times, but which I tend to remove. This is about the fact that it is surprisingly hard to produce a paper…

A video on youtube documents a remarkable feat -the Australian motorbyker Robbie Maddison jumping the Korynth channel in Greece. A 85-meter jump! I am interested to explain in simple terms the…

I was on a plane to Valencia yesterday at the time when Paolo spoke in the Main Auditorium at CERN, and got approved our very first physics result with CMS collider data. Okay -with a small group we…

Russian and US physicists have created a superheavy element made of atoms containing 117 protons that is roughly 40% heavier than lead.  The achievement fills in the final gap on the list of…

A lot has been going on recently in blogs I sporadically visit (I am not a big reader myself). I thus thought I'd put together a list of valuable links here. First of all, Michael Schmitt deserves…

I just read a very nice article by Nature's Zeeya Merali, and I thought I would link it from this blog. It discusses in detail several aspects of the sociology of the very large communities of…