Customer Reviews

Collider: The Search for the World's Smallest Particles

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Strap yourself in and prepare for a mind-expanding journey into the thrills and mysteries of the universe with award-winning physicist and author, Paul Halpern. This book is a gem.

The long-awaited moment when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN goes online has generated a great deal of excitement and (through misinformed press coverage) fear and trepidation. In `Collider' Halpern eloquently explains what the LHC is, how it will work, and what scientists will be looking for when it is operational.

The purpose of the LHC is to recreate the conditions which are thought to have existed less than a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang that birthed our universe. To help readers grasp the enormous potential of the discoveries that could be made, Halpern takes the reader on a thrilling adventure story that traces the footsteps of the scientists whose discoveries have pinpointed the extraordinary forces that created and sustain this planet that we call home.

Peppered with entertaining anecdotes and analogies which clarify the scientific principles, `Collider' is clearly a labour of love for its author. Halpern's highly infectious passion for science transmits itself through every page, and his explanations of the principles lend fuel to the imagination and generate a sense of wonder. The chapters take us on a compelling journey through subjects which include the standard model and the four forces, relativity, supersymmetry, the theory of everything, dark energy and dark matter, black holes, strangelets, wormholes and higher dimensions, describing what the LHC could divulge of these. The book concludes with the future plans for the Super LHC and the International Linear Collider.

For those who are concerned that the LHC will be the instrument of doom for our planet, unleashing black holes or strangelets which would annihilate the earth, Halpern gives reassurance. He points out that it is the energy `per particle' which will reproduce the early conditions, and that this amounts to `less than a billionth of a dietary calorie per collision.'

Like Carl Sagan before him, Paul Halpern has an extraordinary gift for enabling readers to envision the universe as he does; as a wondrous place where everything, from the tiniest particle to the largest star, is dependent on particular forces. `Collider' reveals what we could learn when the portal of possibility that is the LHC shares its secrets and reveals more about these forces which shaped the cosmos.

I think it is safe to say that CERN's Large Hadron Collider has captured the public's attention. Sadly, judging by what has been in the news, little of that attention has focused on the purpose of the project. Both the science -- and the incredible feat of engineering it took to create the LHC -- take a back seat to the hype. The Collider is not, as some claim, a "Doomsday Machine." Or, as portrayed in Dan Brown's Angels and Demons, a means of harvesting antimatter for use against the Vatican.

As strange as it might seem, the LHC is potentially much more amazing and wonderful than any silly doomsday scenario. And Paul Halpern's Collider will show you why. It is the perfect book to read while waiting for CERN to finally work out the kinks and start pushing particles.

In Collider, Halpern offers a clear and compelling explanation of the science behind high energy physics, and the history behind the creation of the LHC. Then he ties together both of these threads -- the history and the science -- to provide context for the search for the Higgs boson, and what that discovery could mean to our understanding of the universe. Halpern presents an overview of physics in the sort of plain, readable prose that makes you wish somebody had explained it to you this way long ago.

And, yes, he also tackles the claims that high-energy physics will destroy existence. (SPOILER: It won't!)

If you are, like me, awed by science and its practitioners, I think you could have no finer guidebook to the LHC than Paul Halpern's Collider.

A book that shows you the way slowly, flanked by three separate introductory segments is poised for demystifying those cursory preliminaries. Paul Halpern's new book, Collider, The Search for the World's Smallest Particles, promises to entice the reader with captivating insight

The book is fortified with an inviting preface, "The Fate of the Large Hadron Collider and the Future of High-Energy Physics," followed by a mesmerizing prologue, entitled "Journey to the Heart of the Large Hadron Collider." The opening is topped off with an intense introduction: "The Machinery of Perfection."

The main difference between fiction and non fiction is that while fiction develops and thickens the plot, non-fiction reveals the purpose and makes you feel that you've learned something worthwhile. And Collider does it all in good taste and style.

He begins by sorting out the secrets of creation. He moves on to the quest for a theory of everything and ends up striking gold and smashing successes. In his explanatory efforts he discusses the four fundamental forces and how they work. And he concludes by speculating about microscopic black holes and the future of high-energy physics. A book that brings the reader to the brink of understanding.

Good luck I say to anyone setting out to write a popular science book on particle physics. The concepts are weird, the math is hard; and on publishing timescales there's not a whole lot of new stuff worth talking about.

Moreover, it's a tall order that's less about content and more about the way you tell it. Happily, in `Collider - the search for the world's smallest particles' - Paul Halpern tells it well.

Anchoring the core physics around a theme is helpful: whether it's Brian Greene on string theory or Paul Davies on the search for extra terrestrial life or, as in Halpern's case, the physics, technology and people that have advanced our understanding of the subatomic world.

Collider is a story of impressive people building big machines to smash small particles together to reveal big truths. With CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) limbering up under the Franco-Swiss countryside, the timing couldn't be better.

At 232 pages before the notes, Collider is manageable without being superficial, and has sufficient pace and variety to engage even those for whom memories of high-school science induce a cold sweat (and for whom leptons is just another brand of tea).

Tracts of quantum weirdness interspersed with biographical vignettes and discussions on collider engineering should ensure a broad spectrum of readers stay the distance. Those led out of their depth, however gently, will find delightful pangs of (at least partial) understanding along the way. Personally, the engineer in me found particular joy in the mix of ethereal concept and enabling technology that particle physics, perhaps more than any other field, embodies. Halpern as a physicist clearly enjoys and respects all aspects of the endeavour. Indeed, Collider stylistically is quite polymathic, even poetic in a Saganish sort of way:

"Alas, summer's heat sometimes shapes cruel mirages. After modifying its equipment and retesting its data, the HPWF team's findings vanished amid the desert sands of statistical insignificance. Skeptics wondered if electroweak unity was simply a beautiful illusion."

Poetry aside, the physics kicks in early with unification, theories of everything (TOE), and the limitations of an incomplete Standard Model.

The better known particles are introduced via their discoverers' stories: Thompson's electron, Roentgen's X-Rays, Becquerel and the decomposition products of uranium, Rutherford's proton, and Chadwick's neutron.

By describing relatively simple experiments from the early era, like the measurement of alpha and beta particle size, Halpern gives his subject a tangibility, a graspable air that prepares the mental ground for later complexities.

Following the evolution of particle sources, accelerators, and detectors, Collider takes us through a chronology starting with unaccelerated decay products striking stationary targets, to linear accelerators, to the various circular synchrotron variants like Ernest Lawrence's Bevatron and Cosmotron, ending with the contra-rotating particle streams and super-cooled magnets of the LHC.

As beam energies increased, detectors became more complex, sensitive, and selective, allowing the existence of myriad new particles to be confirmed or discovered. Cloud and bubble chambers joined hand-held scintillation detectors and Geiger counters in the particle physicists' armory, and as the forerunners of the giant counters, traps and calorimeters stacked up today in CERN's ATLAS and ALICE experiments.

Halpern devotes the last three chapters to a discussion of dark matter, dark energy and the possibility of higher dimensions in the context of string, brane and M-theory, where he underlines the mutuality of physics and cosmology in understanding the bang, whimper, crunch or (somewhat depressing) rip possibilities of an uncertain multiverse.

Looking to the future, Halpern suggests the fate of particle physics itself is less certain than current LHC excitement might lead us to believe. If the Higgs Boson, higher dimensions, or mini-blackholes show up, then fine; but if they don't - where do we go next?'. Larger machines might be an answer, but with costs that were never pocket money now truly enormous, stakeholders, including the physics community, will need to look to their priorities. And as if to say `don't say it will never happen', Halpern dedicates a whole chapter to the last, some would say terminal, back-step in American particle physics: the 1992 cancellation of the Reagan era Superconducting Super Collider (SSC).

Something Collider really brought home for me is how the nature of particle physics as a discipline and a career has changed. Individual pioneers have been replaced by research groups working on projects staffed by thousands. As Halpern says, if the Higgs were discovered, they'd be no obvious single candidate for the inevitable Nobel prize (except Higgs himself of course). Data filtration and computation as disciplines have become as important as the collider itself: the LHC is served by a global network of computers. That creates the opportunity for remote distributed working and facilitates multi-national involvement, but also means young researchers need to think about the kind of experience, and resume, they're building. At PhD level already, Halpern says the slow pace of fundamental revelations has required a force-put change in the definition of what qualifies for the degree in particle physics [we can't all split the atom for the first time, right?].

I've one critical note on the history, and maybe I've just been reading too many Cold War biographies of late, but I felt Halpern's analysis underplayed the military motivation and sponsorship behind the adolescent years of particle physics. Given that the topic's already well covered in works like Gregg Herken's Brotherhood of the Bomb, and that I walked away from Collider feeling inspired rather than cynical, it's a choice of emphasis I'm inclined to forgive.

So quibbles aside, Collider is a bit of a page turner - which by the timbre of my opening statements isn't a bad endorsement. By presenting the obscure realities of particle physics in the context of the machines and people that revealed them, Halpern has for sure made an unfamiliar pill easier to swallow.

I have often found it remarkable that in order to explain the existence of the largest thing that we can imagine we have to search for the smallest thing too. For the curious lay-reader the field is perplexing and complicated, but luckily there are guides like Paul Halpern around that can tell us about these ideas in a clear way. In 'Collider' he gradually builds up a picture of the search for the world's smallest particles, starting from the ancient world through the modern world of atoms that is part of every High school curriculum, and then, from the 1950s, the more specialized world of recent mind-boggling ideas of quarks, fermions, bosons, leptons, hadrons, pions, gluons and various sorts of weak forces: 'a zoo of particles with bizarre properties and a wide range of lifetimes'. Even the most general reader builds up an impression of spins that don't actually 'spin', light and theories that are difficult to marry together, and how gravity is a misfit.

Along the way there are fascinating anecdotes of scientists and facts: scientists like Dirac who made important discoveries about the pieces of the puzzle and yet were unable to fit in themselves; calamitous stories of fixing lightning rods to Alpine peaks and then pertinent quotes from authors such as Voltaire and Plato.

Eventually, of course, it leads to the story of the Hadron Collider and story of making something small go fast... and the collision, and the detection, and the fight for funds. There are interesting facts and characters that really bring the story to life: the story of Robert (Bob) Wilson that was responsible for the Fermilab, and its modernistic and award-winning architecture covering dirt-floors, and the scientists who were working there - on one of the pinnacles of human achievement - having to wade through puddles to take their measurements.

I found 'Collider' a compelling and invigorating read, and one that I am sure will change the way I think about the universe and my place within it. It has shown me that there are many ways of observing, and it is only by questioning what we think we perceive that we can learn where we have come from and where we are going.

Once again Dr. Halpern has managed to take a highly complex subject and help us non-physicists not just understand but appreciate the joy, frustration, and human drama of discovery. Writing on a technically dense subject such as particle physics with a light touch is not easy, but he pulls it off. His highly accessible analogies elucidate the most complex of theories, showing us that human imagination is critical to the advancement of science. Haplern's whimsical, lighthearted moments on the page are the match of Stephen Hawking and then some. His miniature biographies of scientists, such as Fermi, could be a worthwhile book in themselves. As an engineer I can appreciate the challenges of research and experimentation, and as a human being in the twentieth century I can only feel lucky to be alive in a time where astonishment is the order of the day when it comes to achievements in particle physics. Thanks to Halpern for keeping it real!

What an immensely comprehensible and well-paced, entertaining read. Paul Halpern draws back the veil of scientific jargon to illustrate the exciting discoveries and history of nuclear/particle physics. The author has an excellent manner of relating information on the mechanics of physics and gives a well-grounded and convincing instruction on the intricacies of the science. Skillfull authors such as Paul, are able to give examples of complex subjects in such a way that the reader is immediately enlightened. This is a book which sparks new thoughts, inviting areas of further research by conducting a clever factual alchemy.

I picked up the book for two reasons, one as a recommendation and the other for a purely selfish motivation. Having been the recipient of a certain amount of superstitious communication regarding the danger of Large Hadron Collider I was curious as to what the controversy was all about. This is a great book to read in order to develop a well rounded view of the history of the Collider as well as the Linear Accelerators, the Cyclotron and the purpose for which these amazing machines are constructed.

Paul's writing `voice' is not only entertaining, humorous and knowledgeable but also has a very humanitarian tone, something I find an absolute necessity when conveying such critical and complex information which could have large ramifications for understanding the creation of our world. Collider would make a great companion book for physics classes as well as just purely enjoyable reading for those who are scientifically or historically minded and who desire a logical set of tools for understanding a very complex science.

Just finished reading Collider. Made the physics come alive, with humor and helpful fun analogies. Besides explaining the inner workings, I thought the writers background information and humorous insight made the book enjoyable reading.

From the title, I initially expected this book to be about the forthcoming Large Hadron Collider (a recent interest of mine). I was wrong. In fact, the LHC is a small fraction of this book.

This book is predominantly a history one. It covers a fair bit of the history of modern physics. At times, it is breathtakingly fast. In others, it drags a bit. If you've never read anything of this history, then I recommend this book as a good way to get some highlights. But if you have, then you've likely already read the better ones (e.g. Crease's The Second Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Twentieth-Century Physics or Hoddeson's Fermilab: Physics, the Frontier, and Megascience).

Regarding science, the book is really pretty thin. There is some science interleaved within the history. But there are many books that do a better job on that. If you know very little modern physics and/or particle physics, this is not the book for you, as there is little in there to learn. For example, Gordon Kane's book The Particle Garden: Our Universe As Understood By Particle Physicists (Helix Books) is superior.

On the Large Hadron Collider itself, there are two competitor books, Don Lincoln's The Quantum Frontier: The Large Hadron Collider and Lyndon Evan's The Large Hadron Collider. Both of these books have gobs of details on the equipment. I've read the first and liked it. I have not read the second, as it just came out and is expensive. (So I'm guessing on the details there.) However, since Evans was the lead scientist building the LHC, he is likely to write a comprehensive description and I'll probably buy it eventually.

In summary, this book is a thin and fast history of modern physics, with minimal science and LHC information. If you want a quick read of the history, choose this book. If you want science or LHC information, don't.

The excerpt from the front flap of this book is misleading. More of this book refers to the historical search for smaller and smaller particles and to other detectors, than to the LHC.

I do not object to a metaphor that helps me visualize a concept. However, the author's extensive use of various literary devices and literary references were a distraction. Pages 12 and 13, for example, refer to the Montagues and the Capulets, Dickens, and Truman Capote. The last two, by the way, were part of an explanation of the criticisms of string theory.

Later chapters move more smoothly, although I do not think that there is much in this book for anyone who knows physics at the level of a first-year college course.