Massive: The Missing Particle That Sparked the Greatest Hunt in Science

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More About This Book

Overview

In Massive, prize-winning science journalist Ian Sample tells the story of the race to locate the Higgs Boson, the elusive particle whose existence remains to be proven. Since 1964, when Peter Higgs described an over-arching theory of mass that depended on the Higgs boson, the scientific community has been possessed by the increasingly competitive race to prove its existence. The ensuing four-decade quest has cost billions of dollars and consumed the attention of scientific luminaries and of politicians eager to ensure that their home country would be the one to get credit for discovering the long-sought-after particle. Now, with the Large Hadron Collider up and running, the discovery of the Higgs boson seems finally to be within our grasp. Sample’s Massive provides the juicy backstory to what will possibly be the defining discovery of modern physics, complete with intense rivalries, clashing egos, and grand ambition.

Editorial Reviews

Kirkus Reviews

Lively popular account of late-20th-century physics, physicists and their machines.

To a physicist, "massive" does not mean "heavy," explains Guardian science correspondent Sample. It means having mass or weight (such as an atom) as opposed to having no mass (such as a light photon). The author adds that at the instant of the Big Bang, everything in the universe existed as energy. Einstein pointed out that energy and mass are equivalent, and an instant after the Bang, an energy field that permeated the fledgling universe switched on. Depending on how strongly particles felt it, they acquired mass, resulting in protons, electrons, atoms, molecules, stars and eventually life itself. This is the Higgs field named after British physicist Peter Higgs, the central figure in Sample's narrative. Scientists take a new theory seriously when it makes accurate predictions, and discoveries of the W and Z particles in the 1980s did just that. Although now an accepted concept, the theory also predicts a massive Higgs particle, an essential element and the only particle in the standard model of our universe still undiscovered. Careful readers will learn a good deal of physics, but Sample spends equal time on personalities, rivalries and histories of the gigantic particle accelerators racing to find the Higgs. In the lead is the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), which uses the world's largest accelerator, now operating in Switzerland. American readers may wince to learn how the United States assured itself second place when Congress cancelled the much larger Superconducting Super Collider in 1993, but the modest collider at Fermilab outside Chicago remains a contender.

Quality science journalism.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780465028528
  • Publisher: Basic Books
  • Publication date: 4/3/2012
  • Edition description: First Trade Paper Edition
  • Pages: 288
  • Sales rank: 566,901
  • Product dimensions: 5.40 (w) x 8.20 (h) x 0.90 (d)

Meet the Author

Ian Sample is an award-winning science correspondent at the Guardian. His writing appears regularly across the news, features, comment and weekend magazine sections of the newspaper and associated websites. He holds a PhD in biomedical science from Queen Mary, University of London and has won several journalism prizes, including two from the Association of British Science Writers, which named him investigative journalist of the year in 2005. He joined the Guardian in 2003 after four years as a reporter, feature writer and news editor at New Scientist magazine. He lives in London.

Table of Contents

Prologue ix

1 Long Road to Princeton 1

2 Shadow of the Bomb 15

3 Seventy-Nine Lines 35

4 The Enchanted Prince 55

5 An Earnest Revenge 71

6 Reagan's Renegade 103

7 Massive Maggie 125

8 The End Is Not Nigh 143

9 The Gordian Knot 169

10 Chasing the Wind 189

11 Hidden World 211

Afterword 223

Acknowledgments 227

Notes 231

Bibliography 249

Index 253

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Sort by: Showing all of 6 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted August 8, 2011

    Incredible!

    This book is packed full of an incredible amount of very interesting information! Everything from the beginnings of particle physics to modern hadron colliders with their historical backgrounds, and then some!

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    Posted May 23, 2011

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