Category Archives: Physics

Almost forgot the Higgs thingy …

CERN, Physics

Ahh right … there was a big presentation this Tuesday at CERN.

Both ATLAS and CMS presented their latest and greatest on the Higgs hunt. And … after all the excitement before, I have to admit that I was slightly disappointed by the results. Sure they excluded a lot and yes they found some hints, but still everything is far from significant and there have been many examples of such discrepancies before … all disappearing after all. Actually ATLAS claimed to have fully excluded one of these previous effects. Well, I guess Rolf Heuer’s final words summarised the whole thing quite well … nothing definitely seem, nothing definitely excluded, let’s wait for next year’s data!

Experimental limits from ATLAS on Standard Model Higgs production in the mass range 110-150 GeV. The solid curve reflects the observed experimental limits for the production of Higgs of each possible mass value (horizontal axis). The region for which the solid curve dips below the horizontal line at the value of 1 is excluded with a 95% confidence level (CL). The dashed curve shows the expected limit in the absence of the Higgs boson, based on simulations. The green and yellow bands correspond (respectively) to 68%, and 95% confidence level regions from the expected limits.

Here you can find an explanation on what this image is actually showing.

More on slammed science

Berlin, CERN, DESY, Outreach

Just got an email with the links to the first Youtube videos from the Weltmaschine Science Slam in November.
Be aware that all is in German.

1. “Schwarze Löcher am LHC Teilchenbeschleuniger” (Sofie Wolf)
2. “Das ATLAS-Experiment” (me)
3. “Dark Matter: Kleine Teilchen, dunkle Massen” (Eike Middell)

?. “Die Naturgesetz-Maschine – Das Noether-Theorem” (Ulrik Günther)
?. “Von Flaschen, Mücken und UFOs – Der LHC-Teilchenbeschleuniger” (Clemens Lange)
?. “Zufall, Zonk und Z-Boson – Wahrscheinlichkeit und Monte-Carlo-Simulationen” (Martin Mamach)

Slam time [update]

Berlin, CERN, DESY, Outreach

Today is slam time in Berlin … my first one … quite excited!
19h00 at Urania Berlin (link).

Back from the slam … second of six :) … it was an interesting and entertaining night, though I didn’t see much as I had to wait outside for all others to finish before me … anyways, there might be another slam coming up some time next year …

Apparently there will be recordings of the event on youtube at some point … I’ll keep you updated!

Paris, but not Cairo

Paris, Physics

Now I finally have the time to write a few words about last week, which I happened to spend in Paris. The 2011 Hadron Collider Physics Symposium was on the menu, a week of physics talks with the latest and greatest from the theory, Tevatron, the LHC and others. Quite a few nice and interesting talks and posters, a nice conference dinner on a boat on the Seine and besides all that some (too little) time to see Paris. It’s been eight years since I’ve been there, still I could remember a few places … which always feels good. I stayed in Troels’ old apartment, which a friend of his now rents, but doesn’t use all year long.

While strolling the streets at night I also came across a few Space Invader pieces, which kinda fitted well as I just watched my “Exit through the gift shop” DVD recently …

Besides all the good points, the internet was really crappy at HCP and non-existing in the apartment. Therefore I didn’t manage to do as much work as I was hoping to get done. Also I got asked whether I wanted to present our long lived particle results at a conference in Cairo next week. Though it seemed quit tempting I finally refused as I will be quite busy with the Weltmaschine Science Slam tis week and still had the non-internet problem … by now it actually showed that the decision was also quite good from a health point of view seeing all the news from Cairo these days.