Customer Reviews

Antimatter

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Physicist Frank Close offers a short but enlightening look at a frequently misunderstood aspect of physical reality in his book Antimatter. In about 150 pages, Close delivers a solid summary of the historical and current research into the nature of the tricky particles, especially the positron.

As a physics buff, albeit a non-technical one, Close's descriptions and narrative are easy to follow and not overly-detailed. He keeps close to his main points, explaining the nature of antimatter and exposing some of the latest experiments into its properties, without overburdening the reader with dense technical interjections. While I thought I understood antimatter prior to reading this book, Close provided a strong overview that supplements the understanding of most any popular physics reader, myself included.

Close explores many of the theories surrounding the symmetries between normal matter and antimatter, as well as offering some thoughts on why we might see a universe which appears to be largely devoid of antimatter. While a small handful of antimatter particles have been created in labs around the world, as well as a few dozen antihydrogen atoms, the mysterious lack of antimatter in the universe remains one of the questions needing a great deal of further research to explain. Close uses the Tunguska event to explore the possibility that a chunk of antimatter could have caused the currently unexplained explosion in 1908 (Close determines it was not antimatter, but leaves the question open until the latter chapters). The author also debunks most of the antimatter properties and usages found in Dan Brown's Angels and Demons, as well as the idea that antimatter is likely to supplement traditional sources of energy found on the planet.

Popular physics readers have good cause to pick up this tightly-focused book, and will almost certainly learn things about antimatter that aren't covered in many sources. A solid, very quick read that can be knocked out in an afternoon, I recommend this book to anyone interested in physics wanting to gain a reasonable understanding of this mysterious and interesting subset of the science.

This is a superb book! The title is Antimatter, but don't be fooled: The book is about a lot more than antimatter. Prof. Close is a great physicist, and he has been involved with the LHC at CERN. His book explains everything in a perfectly clear and understandable way so that you understand the theory and the applications behind the work of CERN in general, and of the Large Hadron Collider. This is the best book on particle physics, written by a top scientist, and it is written in a style that makes it not only very clear--but also a lot of fun to read! The stories here are amazing!! Congratulations, Dr. Close!!
JCM

Antimatter
Despite this book being on the "shorter" side, it's an excellent book -- well worth reading.

This book is written for the usual armchair scientist (no heavy math) but goes into enough details to be meaningful. In particular, this book explains Dirac's mathematical work in predicting antimatter ... from which one can really appreciate Dirac's mental genius.

Can't go wrong buying this book!

This short book is a friendly, well written treatment of particle physics with special attention paid to anti-matter.

The last chapter (9) of the book "debunking" prospects for commercial or military use of anti-matter is fine, I guess, but seemed unnecessary - it did seem to make this otherwise charming book end on a lower plane.

The book is good if you like particle physics and are a layperson. If you want more, I suggest "Lightness of Being" by Wilczek (another physicist). Relatedly, the recent biography of Dirac (the theoretician) is also quite good: "The Strangest Man," by Farmelo.

Antimatter is one of the most intriguing discoveries in all of twentieth century Physics. The idea that there is material reality that is in some sense "opposite" to our own seems bizarre and almost occult. And yet, antimatter is very much real, albeit extremely hard to come by. All of what we see in the Universe is overwhelmingly made of the "regular" matter, and it took some highly sophisticated theoretical speculation coupled with extremely ingenious experimental work to convince the world of the reality of antimatter. For the past eighty plus years antimatter has been a subject of intense scientific research as well as the endless source of fascination in the works of popular science and science fiction. A big part of this fascination is due to the fact that antimatter could be used as a very effective and compact source of energy: a single gram of antimatter could release more energy than some of the early nuclear weapons. This feature of antimatter has made it a preferred choice for fueling intergalactic travel in Star Trek, the main destructive weapon in Dan Brown's Angels & Demons, as well as an explanation of the 1908 Tunguska explosion. In recent years there has been a lot of speculation even in the mainstream news sources that the US military is actively working on weaponizing antimatter.

Because of the antimatter's exotic nature that is nothing short of miraculous, it has often been very hard to separate the fact from fiction in all of the accounts of its properties. In this short book Frank Close attempts to do just that - explain what antimatter really is, how was it discovered, what is it good for, and how plausible are many of the claims about it that have been circulating around lately. Close manages to create a very readable and exciting popular science book. The discovery of antimatter and all the subsequent research on it form one of the main chapters in the fascinating development of the twentieth century particle Physics. Many of the events that are touched upon in this book have by now become an entrenched part of the Physics lore, but there are also a few less familiar stories that had not received a proper amount of coverage. In that respect this book can be a valuable source of new information even for people who are already very familiar with the history of particle Physics. The necessary mathematics needed for the understanding of some of the deeper concepts has been reduced to the absolute minimum. The matrix algebra which features prominently in Dirac's equation has been relegated to one of the appendices, and it is not necessary for the understanding of any of the main points of this book. After reading it, hopefully it will become apparent how widely exaggerated some of the most prominent recent claims about the antimatter have been. The book also provides a glimpse into one of the biggest unresolved questions about the properties of the Universe - why there is vastly more matter than antimatter out there. It may even spur some young reader into deciding to pursue a career in Physics and help resolve this big mystery.

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There exists a mirror world to our own--an anti-world, if you will, built from antiparticles (examples: anti-electron or positron, antiproton, antineutron) that form anti-atoms (example: anti-hydrogen), anti-molecules, and possibly even anti-life! Science fiction, you say? No, science FACT.

Welcome to the world of antimatter. We're given a tour of this anti-world by Frank Close, OBE (Order of the British Empire), a Professor of Physics at Oxford University and science author.

What is antimatter? In particle physics (which this book examines in detail), antimatter is the extension of the concept of the antiparticle to matter, where antimatter is composed of antiparticles in the same way that normal matter is composed of particles.

Close tells us about his slim book:

"One of my primary goals in this book will be to attempt to separate fact from fiction in the antimatter story...This book will tell the [true] story of antimatter, what it is, how it was discovered, how we can make it, and what opportunities and threats it could pose. It will assess the reality of antimatter as fuel for space odysseys and for weapons."

What happens when antimatter comes in contact with matter? Answer: annihilation! This simple fact, as Close explains, is used especially in medicine.

Finally, everything in this book is explained thoroughly. If you know what electrons, protons, and neutrons are then you should be able to understand this book. As with all books of this type, the more of a science background you have, the more you will enjoy this book.

In conclusion, this book inspires a sense of awe as it examines, what perhaps is, the strangest thing in the universe. And remember:

DON'T SHAKE HANDS WITH AN ANTI-ALIEN!!

(first published 2009; foreword; 9 chapters; main narrative 150 pages; 2 appendices; endnotes; bibliography; index)

<<Stephen Pletko, London, Ontario, Canada>>

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This fascinating book offers a lively account of the discovery of antimatter and their properties. The applications of positrons on earth are very exciting. For example, positron emission from radioactive atoms has become useful to trace the brain's activity through positron emission tomography (PET) technique. Positron annihilation has been used in testing aircraft turbine blades for metal fatigue.

The book also demystifies many fantasies of antimatter. We may wonder why antimatter is rare in the universe or excited about antimatter bombs and antimatter factory. It is essential reading for laymen who want to know about the ghostly antimatter!

Have you every wondered what all those strange high energy physics terms used means and how they are interrelated. This is the book to read to better understand them. It's short which is a plus because this is one of those books that you may want to read several times to better understand these relationships. I enjoyed this book and highly recommend it.

At 148 pages, Mr. Close has produced a very nice little book on antimatter. It is well written, concise, and articulate, and can quite comfortably be read in just one sitting. To the point throughout, there is no spare or wasted verbiage here. Just a quick "in-and-out" on antimatter. The text contains no math whatsoever. As such, any person with a passing familiarity/interest in astronomy and particle physics will have no trouble reading and completely comprehending this book. (The book probably will be a little uncomfortable at first for readers who do not know what a positron or antiproton is, for example, but I suspect that the average reader of this book will already have a general interest in physics or astronomy such that the level of the book should not intimidate in any way whatsoever.)

I particularly appreciated the length to which Mr. Close went to to de-bunk the idea promulgated implicitly in the movie "Angels and Demons" that antimatter explosive devices are just around the corner. Thank God they are not. Also debunked is the possibility that the Tunguska explosion in 1908 was the result of a piece of antimatter colliding with the Earth. Lamentably, Mr. Close also dashes hope for antimatter propulsion to the stars any time soon.

All-in-all, if you wanted a short and sweet introduction to antimatter, you'll really enjoy this book.

This is a short, quite accessible, description of antimatter and its discovery.
The history is well-known. Dirac married quantum mechanics with special relativity in 1928 with his famous equation displayed in stone in Westminster Abbey (I am not sure that Dirac, a confirmed atheist, would think much of this, but it is indeed an honor). In one of the most spectacular predictions of mathematical physics the equation implied the existence of a particle similar to the electron, but of positive charge. The resistance of the scientific community was so much that even Dirac seems to have said that the particle might be the proton until Oppenheimer claimed that this was not possible. Although Anderson was awarded the Nobel prize for the discovery of the positron in the cosmic rays in 1932, a few people before him missed the prize for not identifying this particle in the traces of the cosmic rays, among them the Joliot-Curies.
Now the conundrum is served. If matter and antimatter are so similar and our theories of the Big Bang lead us to think that they should be created equally, how come that there was an unbalance of about one part in 10 bilion? Enter CP violation in a fleeting meson called Kzero (Nobel prize for Cronin and Val Fitch). Kzero is a combination of a down quark and an antistrange quark. It turns out that the antiKzero decays at a rate slightly different than that of Kzero. This violation has been observed in the late nineties in other mesons and is the reason for the existence of the three families of quarks.
However, this small violation only explains the existence of a galaxy, not the whole universe, so scientists are looking for clues to explain this discrepancy and it seems that neutrinos might be responsible.
A fascinating story superbly narrated in "Antimatter". The book also debunks science fiction ideas to make clean powerful bombs (although US Air Force members make proposals about this subject) and the possibility to use antimatter for space travel. Not only antimatter is very costly to make, but very difficult to contain if neutral. If antimatter has charge it can be contained magnetically, but in small quantities due to the particles of the same charge repelling each other.