The Quantum Frontier: The Large Hadron Collider

I must admit that I have not entirely finished this book, but based on what i have read, I can recommend this book for those non-physicists who are interested in what all this hoopla about the LHC is about. This book provides an excellent introduction to particle accelerators and the LHC in particular. I had no idea of the vast forces and technological conquest involved. I find the operational details of the largest and most complex machine created by man entirely fascinating. This book is a departure from the books I have read about physics lately in that it is about the main tool of the modern particle physicist and not too deeply involved with the minutia of the particle physics. For instance, I was curious about the proton beam itself. What would it look like? What would happen if it hit something? This book answers some of my naive questions along with a great many more that I didn't even know to ask. This is a good start to understanding the LHC and I can't wait to read the books that come out after they pop a few protons and lead nuclei!

THE QUANTUM FRONTIER: THE LARGE HALDRON COLLIDER should be in every physics library: it offers an exciting assessment of the Large Haldron Collider, which runs between France and Switzerland, and surveys just why its opening is so significant. You needn't be a physicist to appreciate its importance, and the clear explorations in layman's terms imparts excitement. Perfect for any general lending library strong in science.

Since Galileo first pointed a telescope at the cosmos and von Leeuwenhoek first pointed his microscope at the microcosmos, the power of gadgets in scientific discovery has been self evident. Aside from the Hubble telescope, this is today perhaps no where more true than with the CERN Large Hadron Collider located between the border of Switzerland and France. Like we could crudely discover the constituent parts of a swiss watch by smashing it against a wall, the CERN collider smashes protons together to see what parts emerge from the collision. The hope is that if enough energy is used the resulting collision will mimic the energies present at the time of the Big Bang and therefore give us a glimpse of the heretofore hidden workings of the Big Bang. Though they haven't found it yet, CERN researches are hoping to shed light on many important questions: Why do objects have mass? Interestingly enough, we still aren't quite sure here. Though a leading theory suggests the existence of something called a Higgs Boson which supposedly gives matter its mass, an actual Higgs boson has yet to be discovered. Why is there so little antimatter in the universe? Because antimatter has a very strong volatile reaction to matter, it's probably good it's so elusive. Case in point: an antimatter paperclip hitting a regular paperclip would generate a Hiroshima level explosion. Obviously not good. Still the same, as with mass itself, physicists are hopeful CERN will shed light on the reason for the missing antimatter. (Hint: it may have something to do with the arrow of time itself.) What happens when their is a unification of the physical forces of nature? As is stands there are four currently understood physical forces of nature: the strongest, the strong nuclear force, which keeps the nucleus of an atom together; the weak nuclear force, which exhibits itself through electron decay; electromagnetism, which exists from the nuclear to the macroscopic domain; and finally the weakest force gravity which acts at the macroscopic level. So far only the weak and the electromagnetic force have been successfully merged creating the so called Z particle. An X particle merging the Z with the strong nuclear force has long been conjectured but that still leaves us uncertain about the properties of the merger of a Z with gravity...a merger we believe last existed at the time of the Big Bang. These and other questions loom as we await the results of the work of CERN. And this book is vital manual for understanding both the questions and how we are endeavoring to answer them.

This is a fascinating book that explains in simple terms what has been learned from high energy physics research, and why it's important and exciting. Lincoln does a great job of using metaphors, and things that I understand, to describe things I never thought I could comprehend. He writes with an easy, conversational style and sense of humor, so that reading the book feels like a conversation with a very patient friend who wants to help me understand what he does when he goes to work and why he loves it. The book gives the background to the building of Cern's LHC, the world's largest collider, and anticipates the discoveries that may come from the research done there.

In The Quantum Universe, author Don Lincoln tells the story of the Large Hadron Collider. The LHC is a particle accelerator in Europe that will soon be the most powerful in the world. The scientific potential of this facility is incredible, indeed it has been about 25 years since a similar facility opened an entirely new energy frontier. Lincoln is a researcher doing work on one of the LHC's big experiments and a physicist with considerable experience. This is Lincoln's second venture into popular physics writing. The book consists of five chapters. The first chapter describes the standard model of particle physics, which is the current best theory. The second chapter reminds us that the LHC is a discovery machine and so we don't know what it will tell us. But Lincoln describes some of the more interesting questions. I would have preferred he include a discussion of extra dimensions, but his selection of topics is solid: Higgs, supersymmetry and looking for things smaller than quarks. It is in chapters three and four that the unique strength of this book comes out. The third chapter explains how accelerators work in general, followed by some of the amazing trivia of the LHC itself (for instance the energy stored in the magnets could melt eighteen tons of gold.) Chapter four is about the detectors, of which there are four. One or more of these detectors will make a noteworthy discovery and to understand the discovery, you need to understand the equipment. The first half describes general detector principles and the last half describes the trivia associated with each detector. Lincoln warns the detail-phobic that they can skip the trivia, but the book would be much poorer had he omitted these details. Chapter five talks about the physics world beyond accelerators. Dark energy and dark matter are topics that are needed to describe the cosmos and Lincoln tells how the accelerator studies can help us understand the structure of the universe itself. He also talks about other accelerators and possible upgrades. Physically the book is small and attractive. The writing level is comparable to a science writer in a popular science magazine. If you've read his earlier book, this one is a bit easier to read and obviously more aimed at a lay audience. One negative of the book is the print is pretty small. But that is a publisher choice and not one for which the author has control. As the LHC turns on and people become interested in the inevitable discoveries, The Quantum Frontier is an excellent introduction and one to which I will no doubt return.