A Quantum Diaries Survivor

“One reason we like supersymmetry is that we haven’t seen any of the particles“

Michael Weinberger (interviewed here). What can I say… “So far so good”

Nature has the story (by Geoff Brumfiel) about a “scientific” publication on creationism, which will publish peer-reviewed articles on the matter.

The publication, Answers Research Journal (ARJ), is free and online, for maximum damage. Its very name gives away that this is about giving answers, not posing questions: so scientists can jolly well ignore it, since a real research line is dead once answers are all there.

In any case, I find I agree with Keith Miller, a geologist at Kansas State University, who is quoted in the Nature piece: he is reported arguing that “scientists must be careful when responding to the launch of ARJ . Taking too strong a stand against the journal will fuel creationists’ accusations of scientific ‘bias’ against religion[…]. Researchers should instead try to educate non-scientists about the scientific process.”

I wonder when we will finally get a peer-reviewed journal publishing a selection of those encyclicals passing some reasonable review process… Also worth reading would be a peer-reviewed scientific journal about parapsychology.

Being a devout follower of the church of South Park, I know the ins and outs of Scientology pretty well. And I am aware of the fact that one of its leaders, Tom Cruise, is a person seriously in need of help. So the video clip I saw today, an excerpt of an interview where he speaks of what a scientologist can do to save the rest of us, did not overly impress me . However, I was indeed impressed by the man: looking at him in the eyes when he utters his claims allows one to realize that if we ever built a full-o-s*tometer, we’d have to consider him before setting the range, because on that one count Cruise can’t be surpassed.

Here is a transcript of a piece of his interview:

“I think it is a privilege to call oneself a scientologist, and it is something one has to earn, and…because a scientologist does. Because he or she has the ability to create new and better realities and improve conditions. I think scientology means looking at somebody you know and know absolutely that you can help him.

We are the authorities on getting people out of drugs. We’re the authorities of the mind. We are the authorities of improving conditions. Criminals: we can rehabilitate criminals. Way to happiness: we can bring peace and we can unite cultures. Traveling the world and meeting the people that I’ve met, now, talking with these leaders, in various fields… They want help, and they are depending on people who know, and who can be effective and do it. And that’s us.

It is the time now. Now, is the time! Ok ?”

He really sets the scale. I propose the Cruise as a unit of measurement for full-of-s*tness. It is something quite large, like a Farad or a Coulomb, if you know what I mean. Ordinary, lesser men and women, will be measured in micro-Cruises and nano-Cruises. It is quite convenient as a unit of measurement also because Tom Cruise is still young and its f.o.s. value is quite constant in time, so we will have a reference point for a long time.

(NB: the video was removed by YouTube, but it often reappears here and there… Search it for yourself if you’re in for a laugh!)

“It’s somewhat difficult though to apply mascara without a mirror, and I came to realize an important drawback of these non-stick pans which are made of completely non-reflecting material“

Sabine Hossenfelder

When I came back from Geneva three weeks ago I carried with me three decks of CERN playing cards I intended to offer as small presents to friends of my son Filippo, for Christmas. It was a good idea: the cards were appreciated by the recipients of the present. One of them is Sebastiano, who came to join us with his family - Ivan and Barbara - in our house in Padola: we are spending our days together, hiking on the snow during the day and playing in the evenings.

The cards are very nice: each of them is decorated with a picture of an experiment, a part of a detector, or some scientific information about particle physics or the big bang. A few discuss a scientific discovery made at the CERN laboratory, and some more describe shortly the standard model of particle physics or the subatomic particles. All in all, a very good idea by CERN, through which the world of research in particle physics can reach unsuspecting customers.

Today, however, as we played with the CERN deck a game of scopone scientifico - a game in which some cards have a special value - I could not help noticing a rather odd fact. You could imagine either that experiments, projects, theory facts would be dispersed on the cards without a logical arrangement or correspondence between the value of the card (in most games such as Poker), or that the correspondence were totally random: after all, how could one rank in importance the big bang, the fermions, or the LHC cavities ?

Instead, I was on for a striking discovery. There was indeed some scheme, and I could have learned it by reading on the box: clubs are about the formation of the universe, diamonds about the history of CERN, hearts and spades about the LHC projects and associated experiments. That is fine of course, but then I got suspicious and looked at the details - details are always obscene.

I could thus discover that the aces of hearts and spades were assigned respectively to “The ALICE detector for LHC” and “The ATLAS detector for LHC”. What was, then, the rank of the card titled “the CMS detector for LHC” ? A mere 6 of spades!!

Of course, one could claim it was mere chance that CMS was relegated to a disposable lowly card, while aces were assigned to the two jewels of detectors, ALICE and ATLAS. However, I think one could at least just as well read in it a higher attention of CERN for the two A experiments.

So: does CERN really love CMS as much as it loves ATLAS ?

“It is not who votes that counts, but who counts the votes“

(Josif Stalin)

Somebody suggested I should write particle physics lessons in rhyme, and I do love a challenge, if it stimulates my highly nonlinear mind (somebody else suggested to do a video thereafter, but I’ll pass on that one; a third somebody commented in rhyme). Well, today is a Saturday, and since I did not feel too well, I felt entitled to some pastimes… Below you can find my production: a summary of the Higgs mechanism in five lines, for starters. 

[The usual Limerick’s AABBA scheme applies, while the division in syllables is much sketchier… Syllables in English are a real nightmare, at least for non-natives. I recollect learning a long time ago from Martin Gardner’s Mathematical Games column on SciAm that the language owns a 10-letter syllable: scraunched, but later found out that there are even 11-letter ones actually: broughammed, squirrelled.]

Anyway, here’s my bid at a concise, to the point SM lesson in rhyme:

Boson masses break L-gauge invariance,
And the model just can not keep its stance.
So just pawn the four Goldstones,
Open three W-mass loans,
While a fourth, called the Higgs, keeps the balance.

Of course, you are welcome to contribute to the project by explaining your favourite piece of physics likewise, if you feel in the right vein. Just follow the AABBA quintuplet template, with (if possible) the usual rythm: da-da-dum da-da-dum da-da-dum for the 1st, 2nd, and 5th verse, and da-da-dum da-da-dum for the 3rd and 4th.

Minutes after writing a limerick in a comment to a post on Bee’s and Stefan’s blog, I got envious. “What the hell, I have my own blog… That creation of mine, although not anything to be proud of, should live in mine, not theirs”. Yes, the misery of a blogger’s soul. Anyway, I decided to steal it from there and paste it in my own. The rationale being that if blogspot fries their data bank, I’ll still have this post backed up. And copying it also allows to fix the last verse, which was missing one syllable (added “please”). Oh well. Here it is.

If you think you’ve got something to say,
Just open your own blog today.
Your voice will be heard,
And you will get referred,
But please don’t let that bring you astray.

Not much, but considering I am not an English native and I spent finding rhymes 90% of the fifteen minutes it took me to write it, I am reasonably satisfied.

1. The United States does not torture. That is stuff for fascist sudamerican countries, and of course the US are above that.
2. It is in principle possible to store large amounts of greenhouse gases underground, and possibly fight successfully the global warming threats our world is facing.
3. Forza Italia, Silvio Berlusconi’s party, will not be terminated, as he had previously announced, but will constitute the basis of a new movement. Repubblica reports that Silvio appears still unsure on the name of the new political entity which will gradually substitute FI.  The man is for sure a bit more lazy with restyling than with liftings, but he is catching up. This weekend he announces a poll in all italian cities, where the name of the party will be chosen. Here the three choices he mentioned:
   1. “Popolo delle libertà”.
   2. “Partito del popolo delle libertà”.
   3. “Partito del popolo italiano delle libertà”. No kidding. I wonder if one can instead chose something more descriptive, like the bold “Partito italiano libero del libero popolo partitico italiano della libertà”, or something similarly easy and catchy. Should be fun to see people amassing at the poll booths for such a crucial step in the final crowning of italian democracy.
4. Homeopathy is losing ground, and will soon be confined to its place in the shelves of pseudosciences. New evidence and a critical review of past results (also published on the prestigious The Lancet)  shows that the vast majority of double blind tests with placebos confirm what many had known for decades: it is a scam! Nyaah nyaah!

The CDF control room is the place where the detector is operated during data taking. It is a place full of monitors of all kinds, with notices and instructions posted all over to make sure the shift crew knows how to handle every part of the system. This serious business does not prevent some humor from springing up here and there. Look at the picture below, which shows two members of my shift crew today taking care of a problem:

In the background you can see the notice reproduced enlarged below:

The notice just warns in a friendly way the crew to be precise in their log-book entries - something which is very difficult to teach people to do. The names of collaborators who handle any problem worth mentioning in the CDF electronic logbook are needed to trace back any further issues more promptly. Of course, within a large collaboration it is not always easy to keep track of everybody’s name. I find the task one of the most complex among my shift duties.