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The Particle At The End Of The Universe: How The Hunt For The Higgs Boson Leads Us To The Edge Of A New World (2012)

by Sean Carroll(Favorite Author)

4.02 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0525953590 (ISBN13: 9780525953593)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Dutton

review 1: The Particle at the End of the Universe by Sean M. Carroll.The Higgs Boson?In this book, Sean Carroll tells the story of the building and operation of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) in the search for the Higgs boson. He also explains the standard model and attempts to explain what the Higgs boson is and why it was worth 9 billion dollars to find it. I say attempts because after reading the entire book, including all appendixes, I can’t say I fully understand it. This is not because Sean has failed as an author. He has written the most understandable book on General Relativity out there, (Spacetime and Geometry) bringing GR within the grasp of more humans than ever before. Sean knows how to explain things. The problem is that short of an getting an advanced degree ... morein particle physics, you won’t be able to understand it (and maybe not even then.)In the first few chapters Sean attackes the problem from several different directions and I became a little frustrated as a reader as he retraced and reiterated the logic. What came across is that a lot of smart people got together and convinced governments around the world to spend billions building a giant machine to look for something that they couldn’t really explain and weren’t really sure they could find or would even be able to recognize it if they did. I tip my hat to them for pulling it off. Without regard to the Higgs boson, that part of the story is worth reading.9 billion dollars can buy a lot. It always annoyed me when NASA critics said, “We should spend that money fixing things here on Earth, feeding the hungry, or curing disease.” Still tons of other research could have been done with this money. Was it worth it? There is no use debating that now, the job is done, the Higgs is found. Maybe. Anyway, that money stimulated many economies around the world and lots of new technology was developed to build the LHC. Even so, the Higgs boson never fed a hungry child (except perhaps the children of physicists.) This may be the last large project of its kind we will see. I think bureaucrats are going to be a lot more difficult to convince next time around.So where is my freak’n hover board?! Did we learn anything useful? Will the Higgs boson be helping us build warp drive starships anytime soon? Sean tackles these questions late in the book as he tries to bring home the significance of the discovery. Still he admits that you won’t be seeing Higgs powered computer cores, pogo sticks, or anything else for that matter. The Higgs boson just does not lend itself to commercial application. The bulk of the second half of the book is spent explaining the successes and failures of the standard model. Reading this book made me feel a bit sorry for particle physicists. I don’t believe they are really that much smarter than the rest of us. They spend their lives groping around in the darkness of the infinitesimal, trying to understand the foundation of reality. My best analogy for their plight is this; imagine it is your job to predict the behavior of clouds while not being allowed to use the properties of air. They are also wedded to the standard model, but she is a big, warty, bride with a perplexing dark side who is no fun at parties. She gets the job done, but they can’t wait to dump her as soon as a sexy young theory with the right stuff comes along. (My hopes are on Fluid Space Theory).I recommend this book for the scientifically inclined, some parts would interest general readers but it is not in any way an action thriller and certainly will take more than one sitting to get through. It is a well crafted book and the only errors I noticed were a few mislabeled particles in two of the figures.Reviewed by Hugh Mannfield.
review 2: This had been sitting on my bookshelf for about a year. Prior to the release of this book, I had followed consistently the news surrounding the Higgs particle. So I definitely knew what I was coming into. However I am quite surprised at how engaging, and welcoming Carroll portrays not only the daunting task of wrapping your head around particle physics, but the cracks and crevices of what the Higgs findings entail. The ability to simplify such high-level knowledge into everyday language is a talent not many can properly execute; but Sean does a memorable job here. Sure, there are times where you have to read a passage a few times to get the jist of it. But I feel this isn't due to any abstract ideas, but more to due with the fact that there is nothing one can do to simplify the amount of information the discipline of physics holds. If you're someone that wants to know more about the Standard Model, CERN, particle physics and of course, the Higgs Boson. I'm hard-pressed to not recommend this book as a top general audience science book. less

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