Zombies at CERN!

The Halloween night is just round the corner and I could not keep myself from showing you a film trailer dealing with a very well themed topic: ZOMBIES!

Well, you might think I’m going mad: it might even be Halloween but what the point of talking about zombies in The Gravity Room?

Zombie al LHC

Visto che tra poche ore sta per arrivare la notte di Halloween non potevo sottrarmi dal mostrarvi il trailer di questo questo film che tratta di un argomento perfettamente in tema con la giornata: gli ZOMBIE!!!!

Bene voi ora direte che sto "uscendo di matto" perché se è vero che vi è un attinenza tra il giorno della pubblicazione e l'argomento del film non si capisce il perché questo post debba essere pubblicato su "The Gravity Room".

Petition: secure the EU research and innovation budget

Read more here

Frans Pretoriou visiting CENTRA

Frans Pretorious, one of the major world experts in Numerical Relativity, is visiting our group and will give a Colloquium on Wednesday. 

Also, tomorrow Frans will be part of the jury of Helvi Witek's Ph.D. defense, so let me take this opportunity to wish her good luck (not that she needs it!)

Angry Birds to teach particle physics

From http://www.symmetrymagazine.org 

“
The vengeful Angry Birds cardinal sets his sights on a new target: teaching kids particle physics.

By Signe Brewster

CERN and Angry Birds-creator Rovio announced last Friday that they will team up to produce a learning program for children between 3 and 8 years old. The partnership will focus on the Angry Birds Playground brand, which is designed to make learning about physics fun and accessible for all ages. It is based on Finland’s national kindergarten curriculum.

“It’s not so much to teach kids in a serious way, but to bring them into science in a playful and inspiring way,” says Rolf Landua, head of CERN’s education and outreach group. “Rovio has quite a comprehensive educational program, which is available on the Internet. To hook onto that and provide content that gives young children an idea of what CERN is doing and what modern physics is about with the help of the little angry birds, I think that’s quite promising.”

The birds in the Angry Birds game are angry because pigs stole their eggs. Landua says that in the Playground game, children will walk around an island and search for traces of the eggs. As they do so, they will be asked to solve puzzles, some of which will relate to CERN research.

The announcement took place at the annual Frankfurt Book Fair, which is the largest publishing fair in the world. CERN Director General Rolf-Dieter Heuer and Rovio Chief Marketing Officer Peter Vesterbacka shook hands to seal the agreement."We are also discussing further collaboration with Rovio, perhaps on physics games for older children, or the development of a new game around the Angry Birds in the CERN universe,” Landua says. Rovio released Angry Birds in 2009, after which it quickly became a hit on the iPhone and other devices. The company has since adapted the characters for use in other products, such as playgrounds and the new educational system. 
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The Physics of Angry Birds.

               

"One bad day for science"

This is the subject of a mailing list I have just received from some people at my Portuguese institution in response to this article.

I think it represents well the astonishment of nonitalian people and scientists towards the nonsenses of the italian (lower case is mandatory) law, politics and, i'm afraid to say, public opinion.

Recommended by us: gravitons

“  Gravitons Sesame Street has a learning game that goes with the jingle "One of these things is not like the other. One of these things just doesn't belong." Can you find which one is different? If you've read anything about the kinds of physics we do at Fermilab, you've heard lots of words ending with "on" – words like proton, neutron, gluon, photon, boson, fermion and on and on and on. One of the words you might have encountered is the graviton. Let's get one thing out of the way: At the moment, gravitons are entirely theoretical constructs that delicately walk the knife-edge precipice between the domains of scientific respectability and the shady world of hand waving. The fantastic success of quantum theory to describe three forces – electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces – provides a considerable impetus to try to marry it to the fourth force of gravity. In the same way that the photon is known to be the quantum particle of the electromagnetic force and the gluon is the quantum particle of the strong force, the "graviton" is the name given to a hypothetical quantum particle of the gravitational force. However, a quantum theory of gravity has so far been elusive. Einstein's theory of general relativity has been the most successful description of gravity, but when it encounters the quantum realm, it predicts nonsense, with impossible infinities popping up throughout the calculations. Infinities like that are nature's way of saying "back to the drawing board." And though theoretical physicists have quite a way to go in coming up with such a model, it is still possible to work out some of the properties of gravitons. (Continue to read on Fermilab Today)

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Meccanica Quantistica e Meccanica Stocastica

N.B.: Per la comprensione di questo post è consigliata la lettura del post sul moto browniano che puoi trovare a questo link alla voce "che cos'è il moto browniano?".

"Costruire" la Meccanica Quantistica.

La storia della meccanica quantistica è ricca di importanti controversie e di interessanti paradossi, incentrati principalmente sul problema della misura. Approssimativamente parlando, le controversie si suddividono in due classi. Alla prima appartiene la controversia sorta tra coloro che erano d'accordo o in disaccordo con l'interpretazione di Copenaghen della meccanica quantistica. La tipica e più famosa polemica di questo genere fu quella tra A. Einstein e N. Bohr. La seconda si interessa del problema se la “riduzione del pacchetto d'onde” causata dalla misura possa essere o no essere descritta dalla meccanica quantistica stessa. Einstein presentò con B. Podolsky e N. Rosen un paradosso, il famoso paradosso EPR che mette in luce il fatto che la meccanica quantistica a causa del collasso della funzione d'onda contiene una correlazione a distanza non locale "assurda". La misura su un sistema I (si parte da un sistema che viene poi separato in due sottosistemi I e II) non perturba mai II (in quanto II è lontano da I), cosicché si possono ottenere informazioni su II senza alcun tipo di perturbazione. Il paradosso EPR vale nell'ipotesi che le misure su I non disturbino affatto II, posto lontano da I. Bohr affermava, tuttavia, che l'ipotesi non era valida, in quanto un sistema correlato non deve essere considerato separabile, e quindi una misura su I deve agire sull'intero sistema, compreso II. Questo carattere della meccanica quantistica è chiamato “non-separabilità”. La non-separabilità o la correlazione non-locale a lunga distanza appare sempre, dovunque la meccanica quantistica manifesti il suo carattere essenziale. É assai difficile capire, dal nostro punto di vista abituale o dal punto di vista classico, un tale carattere della meccanica quantistica.

Recommended by us: L'accorpamento che non capisci

“ ASTRI E PARTICELLE di Roberto Battiston Colpo di mano sugli Enti di Ricerca: super CNR mangia-tutto ?  Siamo in un Paese curioso. Sappiamo di avere croniche, storiche disfunzioni organizzative a livello di sistema.  Sapevamo  però  anche di avere eccellenze  distribuite su tutto il territorio ed in vari settori della ricerca,  con enti di ricerca che producono ottimi risultati, in alcuni  casi eccellenze a livello planetario, nonostante un carico burocratico  e di vincoli amministrativi  in continua crescita  che provocano, tra le altre cose, la fuga dei giovani migliori e di conseguenza  un invecchiamento insostenibile dell’età media dei ricercatori.  Pensavamo che dopo quasi un decennio di manipolazioni di pezzi del sistema degli enti pubblici di ricerca in particolare: - accorpamento Osservatori-Istituti del CNR nel settore spaziale con la nascita dell’ INAF agli inizi del 2000, -creazione dell’ INFM con l’uscita dei corrispondenti istituti del settore della fisica della materia dal CNR, - abolizione dell’ INFM (Ministro Moratti) con il riassorbimento  nel CNR, nonostante gli ottimi risultati della valutazione CIVR - riordino di tutti i 12 gli enti di ricerca vigilati dal MIUR  (Ministro Mussi e poi Gelmini)  durato quasi due anni con il conseguente cambio contemporaneo di tutti i vertici nel 2011 ed il corrispondente  riordino dei meccanismi di gestione solo per citare alcune delle cose più importanti accadute in questi anni, si fosse arrivati ad una situazione in cui ci si potesse finalmente concentrare sulle attività ordinarie della ricerca e non sulle norme su come si organizza e si gestisce la ricerca.  (Continua a leggere su LeScienze Blog)

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Vedi anche "Super accorpamento: Profumo incontra i presidenti degli Enti di ricerca".

LIGO Magazine

Here the annoucement by Gabriela Gonzalez (LSC spokesperson):

The US-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) is supported by an international group of more than 800 scientists from about 80 institutions, the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC, http://www.ligo.org).

Following the examples of other large science projects we decided to create the LIGO Magazine, a regular publication to exchange information, news and stories from and with the LSC community. The inaugural issue is now available, with more than 30 pages of entertaining stories and fascinating photos from the installation of the Advanced LIGO detectors.

We believe that the magazine is also a good way to find out more about LIGO and the gravitational wave community, and to satisfy your general interest in science and technology. Therefore the magazine is available as a free download (pdf file) at: http://www.ligo.org/magazine/

We hope you find it inspiring and entertaining. Let us know what you think and do tell your friends and colleagues by forwarding this link to them.

Nobel

Next Tuesday, Nobel prize in Physics will be announced. The announcement will be broadcast from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

To my surprise, I have been reading several articles (see e.g. this one) forecasing this year Nobel prize to Peter Higgs and even tring to anticipate whom he will share the prize with. IMHO, it would be a huge mistake if Higgs eventually is awarded this year. Obviously, not that this prize wouldn't be well deserved and all, but it has been a few months since the CERN results were announced and several other measurements are in order to understand the nature of this new boson. Given the known policy of Nobel prizes (i.e. regardless the importance of possible theoretical breakthroughs, the latter must be supported by experiments*), such nomination this year would be definitely premature. Anyway, it wouldn't be the first time the Nobel committe suprises the community (see the recent case with Cabibbo)... so one never knows...let's wait one day more for the verdict.

Mainstream metronomes

“ You are getting sleeeeeeepy….. by Julianne Dalcanton Ikeguchi Laboratories has posted one of the most fantastic “physics in action” videos I’ve seen in a long time: The concept is simple — 32 metronomes on a table, all set to the same tempo, but started at slightly different times. But here’s the fun bit — although they begin “out of phase“, after about 2 minutes, they all lock onto the same phase and synchronize! (Well, almost all — there’s a rebel on the far right that takes an extra minute to get with the program). (Continue to read on cosmicvariance)

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Poster at the XX SIGRAV Conference

On the 22nd of October I will attend the XX SIGRAV Conference (SIGRAV stands for Italian Society for General Relativity and Gravitation) in Naples and I will present this poster:

here is the pdf

which is done with the baposter package for LaTeX, a great tool to create fancy posters (i mean, fancier than this one). While in Naples, I'll surely write a brief summary on the conference, so stay tuned.