Do scientists pray?

And a Happy New Year

(via LettersOfNote)

The science behind Santa

How does Santa visit billions of homes all around the globe in just one night? Is this just a load of hogwash that your parents tell you so you'll eat your overcooked vegetables and go to bed early without making a fuss?

You can find the answers in the following video via Grrlscientist (thanks to mabelmoments on tumblr):

And...

A Merry Christmas to all readers

Higgs day

I've just write on my italian blog that:

There will be no dramatic announcement, but only new and more stringent limits on the Higgs mass⁽¹⁾

and the conclusion of the today Higgs' event confirms that impression. Indeed Fabiola Gianotti and Giulio Tonani, respectively spokespersons of ATLAS and CMS, during their CERN's seminars presented the new limits about Higgs mass, and in the combination of the data presented in the official press release (the combination dued by the two experiments will arrive only after the publication of the papers) we can read the new limits: from 124 to 126 GeV.
After the two seminars I discussed via e-mail with Salvatore Fazio, who send me the following two plots about the preliminary results from ATLAS and CMS

and the superposition of the two previous plots:

He also comments: