While exchanging ideas with a dear colleague of mine on possible applications of differentiable programming to the optimization of the design of detection instruments, I came about an interesting, crazy idea which, since I do not have enough time to in... Continue reading →

A few weeks ago I was interviewed by Katrin Link for APPEC, the Astro-Particle Physics European Consortium. APPEC is a consortium of 19 funding agencies, national government institutions, and institutes from 17 European countries, which is responsible ... Continue reading →

Design and purpose are definitely not two things that scientists consider as their guiding ideas in trying to decypher the fabric of our Universe, or of natural phenomena in general. So teleology should not belong to this blog, I agree.read more Continue reading →

Today the University of Padova has issued a call for Ph. D. positions to start in October 2021, and the Department of Physics and Astronomy has 23 new openings. The English version of the call page is here.read more Continue reading →

Note: this is an updated version of the article. For the original discussion of the muon anomaly, published before the release of results, please scroll down.read more Continue reading →

The remains of what probably was Marni Dee Sheppeard were found last week in the mountains of the west coast of New Zealand, near Otira. Although a positive identification is still pending, this does seem to mean that Marni has died while hiking in her... Continue reading →

Almost exactly 15 years ago, I was following a nice conference in the Azores island of San Miguel, where I witnessed with a bit of gloom how the Standard Model was capable of explaining to the tiniest level all observed features not only of electroweak... Continue reading →

Ok, don't get me wrong here - the title of this post is not meant to mock my LHCb colleagues. I have friends there, and the experiment has been doing amazing physics in the past decade, with scores of new particles found, and tough questions posed to t... Continue reading →