The God Particle (book) explained
The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question? is a 1993 popular science book by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon M. Lederman and science writer Dick Teresi.
The book provides a brief history of particle physics, starting with the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Democritus, and continuing through Isaac Newton, Roger J. Boscovich, Michael Faraday, and Ernest Rutherford and quantum physics in the 20th century.[1] [2] [3] [4]
Lederman explains in the book why he gave the Higgs boson the nickname "The God Particle":
In 2013, subsequent to the discovery of the Higgs boson, Lederman co-authored, with theoretical physicist Christopher T. Hill, a sequel: Beyond the God Particle which delves into the future of particle physics in the post-Higgs boson era. This book is part of a trilogy,with companions, Symmetry and the Beautiful Universe andQuantum Physics for Poets (see bibliography below).
Historical context
Fermilab director and subsequent Nobel physics prize winner Leon Lederman was a very prominent early supporter – some sources say the architect[5] or proposer[6] – of the Superconducting Super Collider project, which was endorsed around 1983, and was a major proponent and advocate throughout its lifetime.[7] [8] Lederman wrote his 1993 popular science book – which sought to promote awareness of the significance of such a project – in the context of the project's last years and the changing political climate of the 1990s.[9] The increasingly doomed project was finally shelved that same year after some $2 billion of expenditure. The proximate causes of the closure were the rising US budget deficit, rising projected costs of the project, and the cessation of the Cold War, which reduced the perceived political pressure within the United States to undertake and complete high-profile science megaprojects.
List of chapters
- Chapter 1: The Invisible Soccer Ball: This chapter uses a metaphor of a soccer game with an invisible ball to depict the process by which the existence of particles are deduced.[10] Also, in this chapter Dr. Lederman gives a brief background story of what led him to particle physics.[11]
- Chapter 2: The First Particle Physicist: In a fictional dream, Dr. Lederman meets Democritus, an ancient Greek philosopher who lived during the Classical Greek Civilization, and has a conversation (a Socratic dialogue) with him.[12]
- Chapter 3: Looking For The Atom: The Mechanics: This chapter covers Galileo, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton.[13]
- Chapter 4: Still Looking for the Atom: Chemists and Electricians: This chapter covers physicists from the 18th century onward including J.J. Thomson, a physicist, and John Dalton, and Dmitri Mendeleev both chemists (1834–1907).[14]
- Chapter 5: The Naked Atom: This chapter paints a picture of the shift from classical physics to the birth and development of quantum mechanics.[15]
- Chapter 6: Accelerators: They Smash Atoms, Don’t They?: Covers the development of particle accelerators.[16] (The chapter title is likely an wry allusion to the 1969 film "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?")
- Chapter 7: A-tom!: The book uses the word "A-tom" to refer to Democritus' fundamental, uncuttable particle. This chapter covers the discovery of the fundamental particles of the Standard Model.[17]
- Chapter 8: The God Particle At Last: Covers spontaneous symmetry breaking and the Higgs boson.[18]
- Chapter 9: Inner Space, Outer Space, and the Time Before Time: Looks at astrophysics and describes the evidence for the Big Bang.[19]
See also
Bibliography
Notes and References
- 10.1103/PhysRevLett.13.508. Broken Symmetries and the Masses of Gauge Bosons. 1964. Higgs. Peter. Physical Review Letters. 13. 16. 508–509. 1964PhRvL..13..508H . free.
- 10.1103/PhysRevLett.13.585. Global Conservation Laws and Massless Particles. 1964. Guralnik. G.. Hagen. C.. Kibble. T.. Physical Review Letters. 13. 20. 585. 1964PhRvL..13..585G . free.
- 10.1103/PhysRevLett.13.321. Broken Symmetry and the Mass of Gauge Vector Mesons. 1964. Englert. F.. Brout. R.. Physical Review Letters. 13. 9. 321. 1964PhRvL..13..321E . free.
- News: Father of the 'God Particle' . . James Randerson . 30 June 2008 . 2 July 2008.
- News: Aschenbach . Joy . No Resurrection in Sight for Moribund Super Collider: Science: Global financial partnerships could be the only way to salvage such a project. But some feel that Congress delivered a fatal blow. . 28 December 2020 . . 5 December 1993 . https://archive.today/20130216100205/http://articles.latimes.com/1993-12-05/news/mn-64100_1_superconducting-super-collider . 16 February 2013 . Disappointed American physicists are anxiously searching for a way to salvage some science from the ill-fated superconducting super collider ... "We have to keep the momentum and optimism and start thinking about international collaboration," said Leon M. Lederman, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who was the architect of the super collider plan . unfit.
- Vision to reality: From Robert R. Wilson's frontier to Leon M. Lederman's Fermilab. 1110.0486 . Lillian Hoddeson (Professor of History at the University of Illinois) and Adrienne Kolb (Fermilab archivist and author). Lederman also planned what he saw as Fermilab's next machine, the Superconducting SuperCollider (SSC).. 10.1007/s000160300003. 5. 1. Physics in Perspective. 67–86. 2003PhP.....5...67H. 2004 . 118321614 .
- Abbott . Charles . . Super competition for superconducting super collider . June 1987 . 18 . Lederman, who considers himself an unofficial propagandist for the super collider, said the SSC could reverse the physics brain drain in which bright young physicists have left America to work in Europe and elsewhere. . 16 January 2013.
- Kevles . Daniel J. . Good-bye to the SSC: On the Life and Death of the Superconducting Super Collider . . Winter 1995. 58. 2. 16–25. 1 May 2013. Lederman, one of the principal spokesmen for the SSC, was an accomplished high-energy experimentalist who had made Nobel Prize-winning contributions to the development of the Standard Model during the 1960s (although the prize itself did not come until 1988). He was a fixture at congressional hearings on the collider, an unbridled advocate of its merits [...].. (permalink)
- Book: Calder, Nigel. Nigel Calder. Magic Universe: A Grand Tour of Modern Science. 2005. 369–370. The possibility that the next big machine would create the Higgs became a carrot to dangle in front of funding agencies and politicians. [...] A prominent American physicist, Leon Lederman, advertised the Higgs as The God Particle in the title of a book published in 1993 ... Lederman was involved in a campaign to persuade the US government to continue funding the Superconducting Super Collider... the ink was not dry on Lederman's book before the US Congress decided to write off the billions of dollars already spent.. 9780191622359.
- L&T pp. 9–12.
- L&T pp. 5–8, 21.
- L&T pp. 32–58.
- L&T pp. 65–103.
- L&T pp. 104–140.
- L&T pp. 141–188.
- L&T pp. 199–255.
- L&T pp. 274–341.
- L&T pp. 342–346.
- L&T pp. 382–409.
