Higgs
Subtitle: the invention and discovery of the ’god particle’
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Oxford, England
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 300
ISBN-13: 9780199603497
Description: Relates the history of the search for the Higgs boson, also known as the "God" particle.
Table of contents: title: The poetry of logical ideas. In which German mathematician Emmy Noether discovers the relationship between conservation laws and the deep symmetries of nature -- Not a sufficient excuse. In which Chen Ning Yang and Robert Mills try to develop a quantum field theory of the strong nuclear force and annoy Wolfgang Pauli -- People will be very stupid about it. In which Murray Gell-Mann discovers strangeness and the `eightfold way', Sheldon Glashow applies Yang--Mills field theory to the weak nuclear force, and people are very stupid about it -- Applying the right ideas to the wrong problem -- In which Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig invent quarks and Steven Weinberg and Abdus Salam use the Higgs mechanism to give mass to the W and Z particles (finally!) -- I can do that. In which Gerard't Hooft proves that Yang--Mills field theories can be renormalized and Murray Gell-Mann and Harald Fritzsch develop a theory of the strong force based on quark colour -- Alternating neutral currents. In which protons and neutrons are shown to have an internal structure and the predicted neutral currents of the weak nuclear force are found, and then lost, and then found again -- They must be Ws. In which quantum chromodynamics is formulated, the charm-quark is discovered, and the W and Z particles are found, precisely where they were predicted to be -- Throw deep. In which Ronald Reagan throws his weight behind the superconducting supercollider, but when the project is cancelled by congress six years later all that remains is a hole in Texas -- A fantastic moment. In which the Higgs boson is explained in terms that a british politician can understand, hints of the Higgs are found at Cern, the large hadron collider is switched on, and then blows up -- The Shakespeare question. In which the LHC performs better than anyone expected (except Lyn Evans), a year's data is gathered in a few months and the Higgs boson runs out of places to hide -- Epilogue : the construction of mass.