A Quantum Diaries Survivor

This evening I came home sure that I would have my hands full with the several things to prepare before our departure, tomorrow, for Elba.

Indeed, packing everything we may need for 10 days is a titanic challenge. Kids want to bring their largest toys, you want to persuade them they won't need them. As you put order in the things you want to pack, they run circles around you, yelling, and they make you mad. Eventually they go to bed, but by then your brain hurts.

Of course Mariarosa has much more to complain than me, having spent the day with them - and before, with my mother-in-law, who requires constant attention. Then, hers is the duty and the pride of preparing an always tasty dinner. I have to set the table and put order afterwards.

Putting the kids to sleep is another task Mariarosa ascribes to herself, after I set them for bedtime. While she started reading them a few stories, I sneaked out to my terrace, mounted the telescope, and had great views of Jupiter (see below for the details I could spot during the few moments of honest seeing I could get). Then I dismounted the scope, stored it back in its place, and went downstairs. I grabbed a couple of suitcases and carried to Piazzale Roma, stored them in the trunk of my car, and came back…

Now things are in good shape. I just need to pack up my clothes, sleep a little, and tomorrow we'll leave!

Below you can see some details I could spot on Jupiter's disk (marked with red circles). Credit to Christopher Go for the picture (which I stole from the following site: http://www.kk-system.co.jp/Alpo/Latest/Jupiter.htm ):

Today I walked with my 7-years-old son Filippo to his school, where he will spend his last school day of the first year. It also is my last day at work for the next two weeks: tomorrow we will leave to the Elba island, where the CDF collaboration meeting will be held from June 2nd to 9th.

It was a great idea to have one collaboration meeting away from Fermilab once a year. And it was mine! I described how it started in my Quantum Diaries blog last year: http://qd.typepad.com/6/2005/05/collaboration_m.html

When I proposed to have a collaboration meeting away every year, I had a very clear goal in my mind: to be able to go back to the wonderful bay of La Biodola, where our Pisa colleagues organize every three years a fantastic conference called Frontier Detectors for Frontier Physics. I had the luck to participate in 2000 and 2003, but arguably detector building is not my primary occupation…

Luckily, Giorgio Bellettini and his colleagues did organize this year's Collaboration Meeting in La Biodola. I am grateful to him… I will spend there not just the week of the meeting, but a full 10 days of leisure, good food, and clear waters.

Here is a view of the meeting venue, Hotel Hermitage:

Wow, just a few days of work as new italian minister of Research, and Fabio Mussi has made two huge steps forwards. After canceling a few of the rushed decrees signed by the goner minister Moratti (I will not bore you by explaining why he did a great thing), today Mussi announced he withdrew Italy's veto to european stem cell research in Brussels, which the former government had placed.

Signs of appreciation have come from the world of italian research, while of course opposition parties are crying at the scandal. It was due time to put order in the mess that the former government had created.

I always thought he was a fine politician and an intelligent man, but I'm starting to really admire Mussi.

I just wonder what will be next: an increase of funding to research budgets ? Go Fabio!

Hmmm, if the stored energy of LHC beams at 14 TeV producing 10^34 cm-2 s-1 luminosity equates to the kinetic energy of a fully loaded Airbus A320-200 at landing speed, to what does the Tevatron beams energy equates ?

…Take one seventh for the beam energy, one 60th for the luminosity… And you get the answer:

It is the kinetic energy of a fully loaded A320-200 taxiing through the airport corridors!

Darn… For some reason this fails to impress me

By reading the recent New Yorker's interview ( http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060605fa_fact&nbsp to Oriana Fallaci, a famous italian novelist now fortunately borrowed for good by the United States, one cannot help commiserating with the once-upon-a-time sane writer.

Just one of her thoughts, disclosed to Margaret Talbot while discussing the possible erection of a mosque in Tuscany by her most hatred enemies (Mexicans beware: you come close seconds), the muslims:

“If I’m alive, I will go to my friends in Carrara—you know, where there is the marble. They are all anarchists. With them, I take the explosives. I make you juuump in the air. I blow it up! With the anarchists of Carrara. I do not want to see this mosque—it’s very near my house in Tuscany. I do not want to see a twenty-four-metre minaret in the landscape of Giotto. When I cannot even wear a cross or carry a Bible in their country! So I BLOW IT UP! ”

Yesterday's administrative elections in Italy have shown that italians are happy to be governed by center-left coalitions.

While not surprisingly different from the outcome of recent political elections - which appeared to show a country almost exactly split in two between center-left and center-right supporters, yesterday's results appear to give more credit to the center-left coalition, which receives the trust of citizens when it comes to local administration of cities.

In fact, while it is true that the lower percentage of voters in administrative elections penalizes the right, that only means that even citizens not sympathetic with center-left parties do not fear a center-left major.

Walter Veltroni has been confirmed as major of Rome with 61.4% of votes, Sergio Chiamparino has been confirmed as major of Turin with 66.6%, Rosa Iervolino major of Naples with 57% of votes. They administered well their cities during the last four years, and these percentages are larger than the pool of potential voters of the parties that supported the new elected majors.

Successes on the other side are less blatant. Letizia Moratti won in Milano by a narrow margin, cashing 52% of votes. Chapeau, but Milano has always been a feud of the center-right, and the former major, also an expression of that majority, had obtained 57.5% of votes four years ago.

Another member of the center-right coalition, Salvatore Cuffaro -who is under trial for allegiance of dealing with mafia- was confirmed as President of Sicily with 53% of votes (he had won the seat in 2001 with 59%).

These results are a little encouragement to Romano Prodi, who is starting his five-year term as italian Premier with several difficult challenges ahead. First and foremost, the suffering italian economy. 

So far so good, the young brown bear that left the Adamello mountain range in the italian alps to tour the forests of Austria and Germany is still alive. Recently, news had been spread (by the german newspaper Bild) that it had been killed by poachers.

Now the bear is in Austria, where he runs fewer risks - german authorities had been on the verge of deciding to kill it for security reasons.

Good to know - I had promised a ban on german products for a year if they had killed the bear. But… Wait a minute. What german products do I usually buy ? Hmmmm. Ok, there is the ACE juice by Pfanner, Ilaria drinks gallons of it every day. What else ? Not much anyways. Oh well.

Today I was looking for an effective illustration of the enormous energy stored in the beams of the proton-proton collider in construction at the CERN laboratory in Geneva (Switzerland). I came up with the following:

"At a luminosity of 10^34 cm^-2 s^-1 and a beam energy of 7000 GeV, the stored energy of the LHC beams is equal to the kinetic energy of a fully loaded Airbus A320-200 at landing speed".

I need to check that equivalence. But if any reader is willing to make the calculation, I am happy to offer her or him a beer at the next occasion…

BTW, I am not sure about this, but it is possible that the calculation requires the transverse beam size. Take 34 micrometers as the radius of the beam.

Zerocold (http://zerocold.splinder.com) signals that the Eternity puzzle has been solved.

For details of the story, read 

http://plus.maths.org/issue13/features/eternity/index.html . 

The winners get a million pound prize. Below is the solution of the 209-piece puzzle:

20 years ago Charles Capen passed away…

Chick was a renowned planet observer and a pioneer in the observation of solar system bodies. You can find more information about him at the following site: http://www.tnni.net/~dustymars/ChickCapen.html