Cracking the Particle Code of the Universe

Cracking the Particle Code of the Universe – John Moffat ****

I’ll be honest, when I saw this book I thought ‘Oh no, not another book about the hunt for the Higgs boson,’ and so put off reading it for a long while, but it fact it is far from another me-too book. If you want a good, straightforward book about the what the Higgs is and the basics of the hunt, you should head straight for Higgs by Jim Baggott, but Cracking the Particle Code is quite a different beast.

Two things make this book stand out. One is the author’s personal involvement in the field over a long period, and the other is that he is brave enough not to take the simplistic stance that we’ve found the Higgs and it’s all over, but rather to point out that things are a lot more complicated than the press releases from CERN would suggest, and that there is certainly no sense in which we can say that the standard model is complete and particle physics is signed off. In fact, as Moffat shows, it is entirely possible to generate masses using quantum field theory without the complication of a Higgs boson. He may be a minority voice – but there is certainly a lot that’s interesting about this alternative view.

The book isn’t dominated by Moffat’s own theory as he takes us through the hunt for the Higgs and the implications of the discoveries made at CERN – but equally, lacking the usual need to bolster a career that means once a theory gains enough followers it becomes gospel until there’s a major shift (Fred Hoyle likened such physicists to a flock of geese), Moffat is able to give us a uniquely balanced viewpoint.

It isn’t the easiest read – although in some ways he gives one of the best explanations of symmetry breaking (something that rarely makes sense in popular attempts to explain it as it is dependent on a mathematical world rather than anything observed), his science does crack along at a pace that requires a fair amount of application of a piece of advice I received early on while an undergraduate studying physics when my supervisor said that the only way to cope is not to panic when you don’t understand – let it flow over you, and gradually it will make sense.

If you are happy to take that approach, then I can’t recommend this book too highly. If you want an easy, hand-held read, though, look elsewhere.

Hardback:

Kindle:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...

Pagans (SF) - James Alistair Henry *****

There's a fascinating sub-genre of science fiction known as alternate history. The idea is that at some point in the past, history diverged from reality, resulting in a different present. Perhaps the most acclaimed of these books is Kingsley Amis's The Alteration , set in a modern England where there had not been a reformation - but James Alistair Henry arguably does even better by giving us a present where Britain is a third world country, still divided between Celts in the west and Saxons in the East. Neither the Normans nor Christianity have any significant impact. In itself this is a clever idea, but what makes it absolutely excellent is mixing in a police procedural murder mystery, where the investigation is being undertaken by a Celtic DI, Drustan, who has to work in London alongside Aedith, a Saxon reeve of equivalent rank, who also happens to be daughter of the Earl of Mercia. While you could argue about a few historical aspects, it's effectively done and has a plot...

Amazing Worlds of Science Fiction and Science Fact: Keith Cooper ****

There's something appealing (for a reader like me) about a book that brings together science fiction and science fact. I had assumed that the 'Amazing Worlds' part of the title suggested a general overview of the interaction between the two, but Keith Cooper is being literal. This is an examination of exoplanets (planets that orbit a different star to the Sun) as pictured in science fiction and in our best current science, bearing in mind this is a field that is still in the early phases of development. It becomes obvious early on that Cooper, who is a science journalist in his day job, knows his stuff on the fiction side as well as the current science. Of course he brings in the well-known TV and movie tropes (we get a huge amount on Star Trek ), not to mention the likes of Dune, but his coverage of written science fiction goes into much wider picture. He also has consulted some well-known contemporary SF writers such as Alastair Reynolds and Paul McAuley, not just scient...

Search This Blog