Physics

These days I am spending a few months in northern Sweden, to start a collaboration with computer scientists and physicists from Lulea University of Technology on neuromorphic computing (I'll soon write about that, stay tuned). The rather cold weather of March (sub-zero temperatures throughout the day) is compensated by having access to the night show of northern lights, which are often visible from these latitudes (66 degrees north). At the not-so-young age of 57, I had never seen northern lights before. So it was with some trepidation that,  having received an alert from a colleague at…

These days I am spending a few months in northern Sweden, to start a collaboration with computer scientists and physicists from Lulea University of Technology on neuromorphic computing (I'll soon write about that, stay tuned). The rather cold weather of March (sub-zero temperatures throughout the day) is compensated by having access to the night show of northern lights, which are often visible from these latitudes (66 degrees north).At the not-so-young age of 57, I came here without having seen northern lights, ever. So, having received an alert from a colleague, it was with some trepidation…

Muon tomography is an application of particle detectors where we exploit the peculiar properties of muons to create three-dimensional images of the interior of unknown, inaccessible volumes. You might also want to be reminded that muons are unstable elementary particles; they are higher-mass versions of electrons which can be found in cosmic ray showers or produced in particle collisions.I wrote a couple of posts on muon tomography in this blog in the recent past, where I proposed a novel technique to leverage a not-well-studied physical phenomenon (K capture) that takes place when negatively…

Recent research has proposed that some black holes are the astrophysical origin of dark energy.  Is this true and what exactly does this mean?  What is dark energy in the first place?  These are all complex questions, and this short report is just a thin film on top of deep dark unknown waters.  The truth is that astrophysicists have many hypotheses about what dark energy is and are not at all certain, but the proposal found in the paper that prompted this blog post (1) is intriguing in that it does not require any new fundamental fields or forces of nature.  Instead…

Yesterday I visited a high school in Venice to deliver a lecture on particle physics, and to invite the participating students to take part in an art and science contest. This is part of the INFN "Art and Science across Italy" project, which has reached its fourth edition, organizes art exhibits with the students' creations in several cities across Italy. The best works are then selected for a final exhibit in Naples, and the 24 winners are offered a week-long visit to the CERN laboratories in Geneva, Switzerland. Having delivered over 30 more or less similar lectures over the past twenty…

I just finished reading a very nice piece on the Guardian, written by my friend and ex colleague Eleni Petrakou, who collaborated with me in the CMS experiment at CERN and is now a scientific writer. The topic is the disruptive effect that the war in Ukraine has caused to scientific collaboration. I urge you to read it if the matter is of any interest to you. The question that came up quite prominently as the war was started last March was what to do with the authorship of collaborative scientific publications by Russian colleagues and Russian institutions that participate in international…

Another year just started, and this is as good a time as any to line up a few wishes. Not a bucket list, nor a "will do" set of destined-to-fail propositions. It is painful to have to reckon with the failure of our strength of will, so I'd say it is better to avoid that. Rather, it is a good exercise to put together a list of things that we would like to happen, and over which we have little or no control: it is much safer as we won't feel guilty if these wishes do not come true. Last year I tried this exercise and out of five desirable events, only one materialized; three more went…

The Donnan electric potential arises from an imbalance of charges at the interface of a charged membrane and a liquid but detecting it directly has not been possible. Until now. It is named after the chemist Frederick Donnan, who first probed the phenomenon in the early 20th century using a solution of Congo red. In a paper published in 1911, Donnan described experiments in which a membrane separated two charged solutions and only allowed some ions to pass through. As the two solutions reach equilibrium, he found, they may also scatter charges unevenly across the membrane — and…

This week, scientists from the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California, achieved a revolutionary breakthrough in the pursuit of a “near-limitless, safe, clean” source of energy: fusion ignition without thermonuclear detonation. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced the achievement in a statement in which the U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm referred to it as a “landmark” in science. This landmark involved creating more energy than the laser energy used to…

A long while ago (my gosh, 13 years!!) I wrote on this site a two-post piece titled "Five Tips for Particle Physics Ph.D. Wannabes". At 43 years of age, I felt confident that I could look back to some experience gathered while being a Ph.D. myself, and later on while advising others. I believe the few advices I put together there are still mostly valid today. Have a look if you are a grad student in search for tips!Today, though, I feel inspired to target the work of post-doctoral researchers. I am older than I was when I wrote those two posts, and I have seen things along the way. But am I…