Physics

This morning I arrived to my office with one idea to develop, and I decided to work on the blackboard that is hung on the wall opposite to where I sit. I seldom use it, but for some reason it seems that writing with coloured markers on that white surface is more thought-inspiring than my usual scribbling on a notebook. One clear practical advantage of the (white) blackboard is that whenever my train of thoughts hits a dead end or I write some nonsense, I just erase it and start over, keeping the good stuff untouched and still in sight; on the notebook this is not possible, as one needs to…

Vincent J. Torley in “Bad science by Dr. Victor Stenger, arguing in the cause of atheism” argues well about quite difficult and controversial physics. The article claims that NewAtheist Victor Stenger is another case of bad physics arguments in support of atheism and how they backfire - a favorite topic of mine; I could assemble a book from my articles trashing atheist-physicists’ scientistic arguments that effectively support creationism. Victor J. Stenger is a retired elementary particle physicist who worked on neutrinos and he is author of twelve books including the 2007 New York Times…

Statistics data analysis is one of those things that experimental physicists learn along the way. It is not a topic usually included in the curriculum studiorum of physics students at Universities: only few basic ingredients are taught during laboratory courses, and not much is added to that during a typical Ph.D. program. One usually learns the most common tools to fit histograms, combine measurements, estimate uncertainties on the field, as these things are always needed to produce publishable physics results. But several key statistical concepts often remain fuzzy and obscure in the mind…

"I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics," spoke American physicist, educator and quote machine Richard Feynman — underlining the idea that even leading scientists struggle to develop an intuitive feeling for quantum mechanics.  One reason for this is that quantum phenomena often have no counterpart in classical physics, as we see in quantum entanglement: Entangled particles seem to directly influence one another, no matter how widely separated they are. It looks as if the particles can 'communicate' with one another across arbitrary distances. Albert…

"The abandonment of superstitious beliefs about the existence of Phlogiston, the Cosmic Ether, Absolute Space and Time, ... , or Fairies and Witches, was an essential step along the road to scientific thinking. Probability, too, if regarded as something endowed with some kind of objective existence, is no less a misleading misconception, an illusory attempt to exteriorize or materialize our true probabilistic beliefs." Bruno De Finetti

[The title of this article comes from a T-shirt with ten advices on what to do when everything else fails] It has always surprised me to realize how confident we physicists are of the good faith of our colleagues. We may argue endlessly over one graph or result, getting to the point of publically casting doubts on the dexterity or intelligence of our peers (yes, I've seen that), but we never seem to doubt -privately or otherwise- their scientific integrity. Physicists are not different from academics of other disciplines as far as internal wars for power in the Universities are concerned, or…

"The cusp in the dark matter distribution required to explain the recently found excess in the gamma-ray spectrum at energies of 130 GeV in terms of the dark matter annihilations cannot survive the tidal forces if it is offset by 1.5° from the Galactic center as suggested by observations." Dmitry Gorbunov, Peter Tinjakov, "On the offset of a DM Cusp and the interpretation of the 130 GeV line as a DM signal", Arxiv:1212.0488

"Oh Wind, if Winter comes, can Spring be far behind ?" Good old Shelley inspired me to start today's article with the above verse, taken from his magnificent "Ode to the West Wind". With the weather we are experiencing these days in Geneva and northern Italy, I found it a relieving thought... So, winter conferences are over, and summer ones are still far away. This is therefore a nice moment to try an assessment on the quality of the results that the two competing CERN experiments have produced on the study of the Higgs boson. Why ? Because we are not going to have to change our conclusions…

Calibration does not always mean fixing a device, it sometimes means adjusting to solve a problem.  In the early years of America, the famous Kentucky longrifles that conquered the frontier (and some British) had fixed sights. Since they couldn't be adjusted, frontiersmen - Kentucky was part of "The West" then - would adjust for wind, elevation and range by experience.  If their shot was hitting low and left, they aimed high and right. Inference helped them get a better result. By the early part of the 20th century, "Kentucky Windage" had become part of the American lexicon, to…

The results of a third-party investigation of Rossi's E-CAT reactor have appeared on the Cornell arxiv, and the conclusions of the tests are at the very least startling: An experimental investigation of possible anomalous heat production in a special type of reactor tube named E-Cat HT is carried out. The reactor tube is charged with a small amount of hydrogen loaded nickel powder plus some additives. The reaction is primarily initiated by heat from resistor coils inside the reactor tube. Measurement of the produced heat was performed with high-resolution thermal imaging cameras, recording…