25 December 2011

Happy Christmas from the Imperial College High Energy Physics Group!

The other day we had our HEP group party as we do every year, with about 80 group members and guests participating. The dinner buffet is always the centrepiece of the party, with dozens of hand-made dishes and puddings brought in by group members for everyone to enjoy.

The first year PhD students provided the main entertainment for the party, with their "Pin the Higgs" game, where we all queued up in front of a Higgs Boson mass plot to pin on it our "predictions", while blindfolded—although the clustering in the 120+ GeV range did indicate that this analysis wasn't as blind as it was meant to be! Whoever is closest if the LHC experiments discover the Higgs will win something highly coveted, I hear.... This is Paula going for the win:
...and Jordan claiming the region excluded 10 years ago by the LEP accelerator:
Later on, the party was raised to a yet higher level of sophistication:
with the proceedings coming to an end with a meticulously-rehearsed performance of "Last Christmas" by the PhD students....

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