Ever Smaller: Nature's Elementary Particles, From the Atom to the Neutrino and Beyond

by Antonio Ereditato, Nigel Lockyer (Foreword by), Erica Segre (Translator), Simon Carnell (Translator)

Overview

Ideas, theories, experiments, and unanswered questions in particle physics, explained (with anecdotes) for the general reader.

The elementary particles of matter hold the secrets of Nature together with the fundamental forces. In Ever Smaller, neutrino physicist Antonio Ereditato describes the amazing discoveries of the “particle revolution,” explaining ideas, theories, experiments, and unanswered questions in particle physics in a way that is accessible (and enjoyable) for the general reader. Ereditato shows us that physics is not the exclusive territory of scientists in white lab coats exclaiming “Eureka” but that its revelations can be appreciated by any reader curious about the mysteries of the universe.

Ereditato's overview takes us through a century of particle physics, from the discovery of the components of the atom through an endless procession of subatomic particles—the pion, the muon, the quarks, the W, Z, gluon, Higgs boson, and the mysterious, ubiquitous neutrino (Ereditato's chosen specialty)—interweaving the history of these discoveries with basic explanations of the physics itself as well as the technology behind the discoveries. He considers the particle physicist's impulse to pursue the “ever smaller”—to divide matter into ever more minuscule parts, until reaching the elementary constituents of the universe; explains how Nature likes symmetries; describes the workings of particle accelerators and detectors; demonstrates how to distinguish between three identical quarks; and warns that the ugliest experimental data are more important than the most beautiful theory. With Ever Smaller, Ereditato invites readers to join him in appreciating the beauty of the microcosm.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262043861
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	10/20/2020
Pages:	424
Sales rank:	1,051,688
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Antonio Ereditato is Director of the University of Bern's Laboratory for High Energy Physics. He is the former leader of OPERA, a large multinational collaborative study of neutrino physics at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) and he participated in the ATLAS experiments at CERN that led to the detection of the Higgs boson (the “God particle”) and in several large neutrino projects including T2K in Japan and MicroBooNE and DUNE in the United Sates. He is the author of The State of the Art of Neutrino Physics.

Table of Contents

Foreword Nigel Lockyer ix

Prologue xi

1 Atoms and Beyond 1

2 The Indivisible and the Divisible 7

3 Everything Is Relative 19

4 The Certainty of Chance 37

5 The Family Grows 67

6 Energized Particles 97

7 Three Quarks for Muster Mark! 117

8 May the Force be with Us! 131

9 The World through the Looking-Glass 151

10 The Most Beautiful Theory in the World 161

11 The Color of Elementary Particles 189

12 The November Revolution 213

13 Weak, But Very Influential 231

14 The Chameleon 241

15 Seeing the Invisible 285

16 United We Win 307

17 Dreams, the Unknown, Adventure 343

18 Be Curious 373

Acknowledgments 375

Index 377

Editorial Reviews

08/17/2020

Ereditato, director of the University of Bern’s Laboratory for High Energy Physics, makes his English language debut with this challenging and fulfilling foray into particle physics. He discusses plenty of esoteric equations, difficult concepts such as the Planck constant and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and a dizzying array of the fundamental particles central to quantum interactions. This last category includes quarks (named from a line in Joyce’s Finnegans Wake), hadrons, neutrinos, and the Higgs boson, or “God particle.” Ereditato cannily dramatizes these hard-to-picture objects with descriptions of the experiments and impressive apparatus that led to their discovery. Of special interest is the Higgs boson’s discovery via the CERN accelerator, “thousands of superconducting magnets installed around a vacuum tube... 100 meters below ground in the beautiful countryside between Lake Leman and the Jura mountains in Switzerland” capable of propelling particles at nearly the speed of light. These more accessible sections, however, don’t alleviate the difficulty of the equations that, by necessity, appear throughout. Curious, committed readers with the fortitude required to plow through difficult mathematical and conceptual discussions will find Ereditato’s work rewarding. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly