The Infinity Puzzle: How the Quest to Understand Quantum Field Theory Led to Extraordinary Science, High Politics, and the World's Most Expensive Experiment
Author(s): Frank Close
We are living in a Golden Age of Physics. Forty or so years ago, three brilliant, yet little-known scientists - an American, a Dutchman, and an Englishman - made breakthroughs which later inspired the construction of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva: a 27 kilometer-long machine which has already costs ten billion dollars, taken twenty years to build, and now promises to reveal how the universe itself came to be. The Infinity Puzzle is the inside story of those forty years of research, breakthrough, and endeavour. Peter Higgs, Gerard 't Hooft and James Bjorken, were the three scientists whose work is explored here, played out across the decades against a backdrop of high politics, low behaviour, and billion dollar budgets. Written from within by Frank Close, the eminent physicist and award-winning writer, The Infinity Puzzle also draws upons the author's close friendships with those involved.
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fascinating book Nature thoroughly researched and well-crafted narrative New Scientist masterpiece...I never normally give 5 stars but for this I make an exception. John Gribbin, BBC Focus If [the Higgs Boson] does turn up, some people in Stockholm will likely be among the book's most avid readers ... Close is especially diligent in investigating the priority of ideas and in crediting researchers who may have been left behind, either by the Nobel committee or by popular imagination ... The result is a much more nuanced picture of history. Physics World
ACT I: GENESIS ; 1. The ultraviolet catastrophe ; 2. One in a million ; 3. The smile of the Cheshire Cat ; ACT II:THE ACT(OR)S ; 4. The infinity puzzle ; 5. Broken symmetries ; 6. Missed opportunities ; 7. Peter Higgs ; 8. Enter Gerard 't Hooft ; ACT III: REVELATIONS ; 9. BJ and the cosmic quarks ; 10. Quantum chromodynamics ; 11. Heavy light ; 12. The big machine ; 13. To infinity and beyond
General Fields
- :
- : Oxford University Press
- : Oxford University Press
- : 0.783
- : 30 September 2011
- : 235mm X 152mm
- : United Kingdom
- : 01 March 0020
- : books
Special Fields
- : Frank Close
- : Hardback
- : 530.143
- : 416
- : 8pp b/w plate section and some b/w line drawings