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The Infinity Puzzle: How the Quest to Understand Quantum Field Theory Led to Extraordinary Science, High Politics, and the World's Most Expensive Experiment
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 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.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published October 27, 2011
89 people are currently reading
1651 people want to read
About the author
Frank Close
50 books184 followersFrancis Edwin Close (Arabic: فرانك كلوس)
In addition to his scientific research, he is known for his lectures and writings making science intelligible to a wider audience.
From Oxford he went to Stanford University in California for two years as a Postdoctoral Fellow on the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. In 1973 he went to the Daresbury Laboratory in Cheshire and then to CERN in Switzerland from 1973–5. He joined the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire in 1975 as a research physicist and was latterly Head of Theoretical Physics Division from 1991. He headed the communication and public education activities at CERN from 1997 to 2000. From 2001, he was Professor of Theoretical Physics at Oxford. He was a Visiting Professor at the University of Birmingham from 1996–2002.
Close lists his recreations as writing, singing, travel, squash and Real tennis, and he is a member of Harwell Squash Club.
In addition to his scientific research, he is known for his lectures and writings making science intelligible to a wider audience.
From Oxford he went to Stanford University in California for two years as a Postdoctoral Fellow on the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. In 1973 he went to the Daresbury Laboratory in Cheshire and then to CERN in Switzerland from 1973–5. He joined the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire in 1975 as a research physicist and was latterly Head of Theoretical Physics Division from 1991. He headed the communication and public education activities at CERN from 1997 to 2000. From 2001, he was Professor of Theoretical Physics at Oxford. He was a Visiting Professor at the University of Birmingham from 1996–2002.
Close lists his recreations as writing, singing, travel, squash and Real tennis, and he is a member of Harwell Squash Club.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 72 reviews
August 18, 2017
I must say that this book left me a bit disappointed and quite underwhelmed: it is well written, very detailed when describing the historical evolution of modern particle physics, rich with anecdotal detail and also conceptually precise and lucid, but it simply does not contain enough actual physics.
On the positive side, some subjects of great interest are addressed by the author in a succinct, informative and clear way, accessible even to the novice (including items, like gauge field theories, re-normalization and spontaneous symmetry breaking, that are normally not addressed in the large majority of popular science books); however I must point out that way too much space in the book has been dedicated to specific events/conferences, to the reasons why a Nobel prize was given to one scientist as opposed to another, etc., while more effort should have been devoted to delivering a more meaningful and detailed description of the underlying physics.
From this perspective, I must say that, while it was a pleasant read, this book gave me very little information that I had not already previously received, in a more detailed and structured way, in quite a few other books.
Overall, a pretty forgettable, 3-star-graded reading experience.
On the positive side, some subjects of great interest are addressed by the author in a succinct, informative and clear way, accessible even to the novice (including items, like gauge field theories, re-normalization and spontaneous symmetry breaking, that are normally not addressed in the large majority of popular science books); however I must point out that way too much space in the book has been dedicated to specific events/conferences, to the reasons why a Nobel prize was given to one scientist as opposed to another, etc., while more effort should have been devoted to delivering a more meaningful and detailed description of the underlying physics.
From this perspective, I must say that, while it was a pleasant read, this book gave me very little information that I had not already previously received, in a more detailed and structured way, in quite a few other books.
Overall, a pretty forgettable, 3-star-graded reading experience.
October 27, 2011
This is a really important popular science book if you are interested in physics, because it covers some of the important bits of modern physics that most of us science writers are too afraid to write about. Starting with renormalization in QED, the technique used to get rid of the unwanted infinities that plagued the early versions of the theory and moving on to the weak force, the massive W and Z bosons, the Higgs business and the development of the concept of quarks and some aspects of the theory covering the strong force that holds them in place, it contains a string of revelations that I have never seen covered to any degree in a popular text elsewhere.
Take that renormalization business. I have seen (and written) plenty of passing references to this, but never seen a good explanation of what the problem with infinities was really about, or how the renormalization was achieved and justified. Frank Close does this. Similarly I hadn't realised that Murray Gell-Mann, the man behind the 'quark' name, originally took a similar view to quarks as Planck did to quanta - a mathematical trick to get the right answer that didn't reflect anything real in terms of the particles involved.
For at least the first half of the book I was determined to give it five stars, despite itself. The content was sufficiently important and infrequently covered to require this. That 'despite itself' is because this is no light read - it makes the infamously frequently unfinished Brief History of Time seem a piece of cake. I think the reason for this is that the concepts here are more alien to the reader than those typically met in traditional 'hard' topics like relativity or quantum theory. Close does define a term like gauge invariance before using it, but then keeps using it for chapter after chapter. The trouble is, to the author this is an everyday concept, but to the reader the words are practically meaningless (unlike, say space and time in relativity), so a couple of pages on from the definition we've forgotten what it means and get horribly lost. These aspects (spontaneous symmetry breaking is another example) would have benefited hugely from a more detailed explanation and then use of more approachable terms along the way rather than what can be a highly opaque jargon.
I could forgive the author this though. After all his writing style is fine and there is all that interesting content. But there were a couple of things that dragged the book down a little for me. The first was a tendency to skip over bits of science, leaving them mysterious. For example, at one point we are told that a process can be split into five categories: scalar, pseudo-scalar, tensor, vector and axial. Of these only vector and scalar are defined, so when we are told that the weak force was classified as V-A, we have no clue what this means as we don't know what axial means, or the significance of the minus sign. This is Rutherfordian stamp collecting, giving us labels without understanding the meaning.
Worse though, and the dominant part of the second half of the book, was that there was just far too much dissecting exactly who contributed exactly what little component to the theory, and who got the Nobel prize for what, and who didn't get it, despite deserving it. Frankly, this is too much of an insider's idea of what's important. We don't really care. I wish this had been omitted, leaving room for more handholding on the theory.
The trouble is, there were far too many people involved to get any successful human interest going in the story. Nobel prizes of themselves don't make people interesting. I have two scientific heroes in the last 100 years - Richard Feynman and Fred Hoyle. (Obviously I'm in awe of the work of many others - Einstein, say - but this misses the point.) In that same period there must have been getting on for 300 Nobel prize winners in physics alone. I'm interested in their work, but I can't get too excited about them as people. Those who criticise popular science for being too driven by the stories of a few individuals when so many have contributed miss the point. You can only have so many heroes.
Overall this remain a really important book if you want to get to grips with modern particle physics and quantum field theory. It fills in lots of gaps that other books gloss over. But it would be remiss of me not to also point out my concerns.
Originally published on www.popularscience.co.uk and reproduced with permission
Take that renormalization business. I have seen (and written) plenty of passing references to this, but never seen a good explanation of what the problem with infinities was really about, or how the renormalization was achieved and justified. Frank Close does this. Similarly I hadn't realised that Murray Gell-Mann, the man behind the 'quark' name, originally took a similar view to quarks as Planck did to quanta - a mathematical trick to get the right answer that didn't reflect anything real in terms of the particles involved.
For at least the first half of the book I was determined to give it five stars, despite itself. The content was sufficiently important and infrequently covered to require this. That 'despite itself' is because this is no light read - it makes the infamously frequently unfinished Brief History of Time seem a piece of cake. I think the reason for this is that the concepts here are more alien to the reader than those typically met in traditional 'hard' topics like relativity or quantum theory. Close does define a term like gauge invariance before using it, but then keeps using it for chapter after chapter. The trouble is, to the author this is an everyday concept, but to the reader the words are practically meaningless (unlike, say space and time in relativity), so a couple of pages on from the definition we've forgotten what it means and get horribly lost. These aspects (spontaneous symmetry breaking is another example) would have benefited hugely from a more detailed explanation and then use of more approachable terms along the way rather than what can be a highly opaque jargon.
I could forgive the author this though. After all his writing style is fine and there is all that interesting content. But there were a couple of things that dragged the book down a little for me. The first was a tendency to skip over bits of science, leaving them mysterious. For example, at one point we are told that a process can be split into five categories: scalar, pseudo-scalar, tensor, vector and axial. Of these only vector and scalar are defined, so when we are told that the weak force was classified as V-A, we have no clue what this means as we don't know what axial means, or the significance of the minus sign. This is Rutherfordian stamp collecting, giving us labels without understanding the meaning.
Worse though, and the dominant part of the second half of the book, was that there was just far too much dissecting exactly who contributed exactly what little component to the theory, and who got the Nobel prize for what, and who didn't get it, despite deserving it. Frankly, this is too much of an insider's idea of what's important. We don't really care. I wish this had been omitted, leaving room for more handholding on the theory.
The trouble is, there were far too many people involved to get any successful human interest going in the story. Nobel prizes of themselves don't make people interesting. I have two scientific heroes in the last 100 years - Richard Feynman and Fred Hoyle. (Obviously I'm in awe of the work of many others - Einstein, say - but this misses the point.) In that same period there must have been getting on for 300 Nobel prize winners in physics alone. I'm interested in their work, but I can't get too excited about them as people. Those who criticise popular science for being too driven by the stories of a few individuals when so many have contributed miss the point. You can only have so many heroes.
Overall this remain a really important book if you want to get to grips with modern particle physics and quantum field theory. It fills in lots of gaps that other books gloss over. But it would be remiss of me not to also point out my concerns.
Originally published on www.popularscience.co.uk and reproduced with permission
April 19, 2018
The book is written by a good scientist who wrote some other very clear work and about some fascinating hardcore particle physics. I fully expect it to be a 4- if not 5-star book. Unfortunately, this is deeply disappointing. No doubt it’s not a simple subject and it’s not easy for laymen to understand. Try this: “The question [...] was this: If symmetry is spontaneously broken in the presence of a massless vector-gauge boson (such as a photon), which gives rise to a long-range force, does the Goldstone Boson become absorbed into the massless gauge boson, thereby providing the longitudinal oscillation — the analog of Anderson’s plasma oscillation — required to covert the massless gauge boson into a massive vector particle?”
You can see, you need to be able to retain a lot of concepts to be able to understand what is happening. That’s not the actual problem. Since it took so many brilliant scientist so long to figure these things out, I’m happy to spend a long time to absorb some gist of it. The actual problem is that the book does not attempt to clearly explain these concepts. For instance, the infinity puzzle in the title is about a quantity with physical meaning being predicted by theory as an infinite quantity. I would have welcomed the equation to see for myself. There is no such thing. Fine, maybe it’ll be too much to have equations. But a significant portion of book is devoted to things that are too narrow for anybody to care. And I’m not talking about gossips of Nobel prize. I’m talking stories of timing of the paper somebody wrote, when the review was received, and so on. I get it, they matter for the few scientists in order to sort out chronology. But’s let’s face it, in the grand scheme of things, these are really unnecessary. In fact, I don’t even want to know the circuitous routes of mis-conjecture and the history of corrections. I wanted to know the current understanding explained in more than analogies, in Feynman diagrams and simplified equations so that an engineer can understand. As it is, it’s too much folklore and chronology of the “Hunt for the orderly universe”. I think it is a missed opportunity.
You can see, you need to be able to retain a lot of concepts to be able to understand what is happening. That’s not the actual problem. Since it took so many brilliant scientist so long to figure these things out, I’m happy to spend a long time to absorb some gist of it. The actual problem is that the book does not attempt to clearly explain these concepts. For instance, the infinity puzzle in the title is about a quantity with physical meaning being predicted by theory as an infinite quantity. I would have welcomed the equation to see for myself. There is no such thing. Fine, maybe it’ll be too much to have equations. But a significant portion of book is devoted to things that are too narrow for anybody to care. And I’m not talking about gossips of Nobel prize. I’m talking stories of timing of the paper somebody wrote, when the review was received, and so on. I get it, they matter for the few scientists in order to sort out chronology. But’s let’s face it, in the grand scheme of things, these are really unnecessary. In fact, I don’t even want to know the circuitous routes of mis-conjecture and the history of corrections. I wanted to know the current understanding explained in more than analogies, in Feynman diagrams and simplified equations so that an engineer can understand. As it is, it’s too much folklore and chronology of the “Hunt for the orderly universe”. I think it is a missed opportunity.
July 15, 2016
Close provided a history of quantum physics from QED and Feynman's diagrams to the hunt for the Higgs. I never get tired of Feynman's antics, and it's clear Frank Close doesn't either. Like so many other researchers with new and bold ideas, Feynman's new ideas associated with QED were not taken seriously. The debates were always very heated, so much so, that one time, Feynman gave up mid lecture (even though he was right!). He came back the next time with his (not yet) famous diagrams. But even with the diagrams, people simply did not take his idea seriously. They would ask how he knew what he knew, and all he could offer was that the formula was correct because it gave the right answer. They would ask how he came up with the formula and he said he just knew it because it gave the right answer. This was just circular arguing to most. People were not buying it. Eventually people accepted that he was right (it took a lot of science to get them there). However, even when his ideas about QED were well established, the trouble didn't stop there. Feynman, now older, was at a lecture on QED in which the presenter was explaining Feynman's QED. Feynman raised his hand with an objection and the lecturer began to explain QED to the old man, whom he did not recognize. He talked to Feynman as if he were slow. Feynman cut him off and angrily said, "When I invented it 25 years ago....." The lecturer went pale. I love that story.
This book is filled with many Feynman antics that teach QED in an entertaining manner. My favorite part was describing the normalization of QED and how the infinities are so finely balanced that one can picture the side of the equations as a tightrope walker who was teetering as they walked the rope high above Niagara Falls.
Close is definitely not as accessible as Sean Carroll; so if you are not as familiar with quantum physics and the standard model (especially the Higgs), I would start with Carroll and then read Close to enjoy the Feynman antics.
This book is filled with many Feynman antics that teach QED in an entertaining manner. My favorite part was describing the normalization of QED and how the infinities are so finely balanced that one can picture the side of the equations as a tightrope walker who was teetering as they walked the rope high above Niagara Falls.
Close is definitely not as accessible as Sean Carroll; so if you are not as familiar with quantum physics and the standard model (especially the Higgs), I would start with Carroll and then read Close to enjoy the Feynman antics.
April 25, 2013
This is a detailed history of the discoveries of Quantum Electrodynamics (QED), Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), and their unification into the Standard Model by spontaneous symmetry breaking and the Higgs mechanism. It's one of those people-driven histories of science, which can get boring if not petty at times. But overall, it tells an exciting story of this impressive achievement.
The central theme of the book is renormalization in Gauge Theory. The first half of the book introduces the reader to these topics quite well, and doesn't hold back too much of the mathematical details. I feel like I understand this topic a lot better, now. Very educational.
The central theme of the book is renormalization in Gauge Theory. The first half of the book introduces the reader to these topics quite well, and doesn't hold back too much of the mathematical details. I feel like I understand this topic a lot better, now. Very educational.
March 30, 2020
I have to admit this is not much of a review. For one I read last year, and for two I made very few notes.
I feel this was more of a tour of quantum physics. But, what infinity had to do with, unless I missed it, never showed up. [Disclaimer it could be there and I might have forgot] And it failed to provide a very good over view of the nuts and bolts of quantum field theory.
So, I did rate it 3 ⭐️s. It wasn't boring and fairly well written, although not with the panache of my more favored authors. There was an interesting bit about emotions and scientific discovery that I did find to be something of importance to point out on page 9 of the Kindle edition.
Not a bad read, but not great either.
I feel this was more of a tour of quantum physics. But, what infinity had to do with, unless I missed it, never showed up. [Disclaimer it could be there and I might have forgot] And it failed to provide a very good over view of the nuts and bolts of quantum field theory.
So, I did rate it 3 ⭐️s. It wasn't boring and fairly well written, although not with the panache of my more favored authors. There was an interesting bit about emotions and scientific discovery that I did find to be something of importance to point out on page 9 of the Kindle edition.
Not a bad read, but not great either.
September 16, 2018
This book talks about the history of physics since the WWII. It has a particular discussion on two prominent figures in physics: the Dutch physicist Gerard 't Hooft, and the Pakistani physicist Abdus Salam. For general people, probably this is the best book on Higgs Boson, from the evolution of Higgs mechanism until its final discovery in LHC.
Similar to classical physics, quantum physics has two eras of development. One goes by the name "Quantum mechanics" and the second one as "Quantum field theory". "Heisenberg inequality" and "de Broglie's equation" etc. are the descriptions of the mechanical view of the quantum world. On the other hand, the first Quantum field theory started with Paul Dirac. Thanks to Julian Schwinger, Richard Feynman, Tomonaga etc. who made their effort to transmute "Dirac equation" into QED (Quantum Electro Dynamics).
But, all modern Quantum field theory is based on something called the "Yang Mill theory." Electroweak theory and QCD/QFD (quantum chromodynamics/quantum flavordynamics) are two such Yang Mill theory.
The name of the book "the infinity puzzle" comes from the fact that, all the Quantum field theory either based on Dirac equation or Yang Mill theory were unsolvable at the very beginning, as their calculation leads to infinity. In the case of QED, Feynman and Schwinger somehow manage to avoid infinity using their unique method of calculation. Their "renormalisation" technique which ultimately made QED practical earned them the Nobel in 1965. But, later same infinity in Yang Mill theory devastated quantum physics. For a very long time, physicist didn't know how to renormalise field equations those based on Yang Mill theory. Many thought future of any Quantum field theory is doomed. Then came the saviour, the brilliant Dutch physicist Gerard 't Hooft who single-handedly solved the renormalisation problem of prevalent Yang Mill theories.
Renormalisation may be the critical milestone for modern Quantum field theory, but for a Yang Mill theory to fit with the experiment, other vital concepts need to be ensembled under a unified description. For Electroweak theory, Steven Weinberg explained the mechanism how the symmetry of nature be broken, hence giving mass to specific bosons: W & Z. While Sheldon Glashow had done the main heavy lifting for Electroweak theory, he outlined the "gauge invariance" nature of the theory which gives rise to W/Z/Photon (four bosons in total). Both of them earned the Noble of 1979 along with Abdus Salam. The author argued that Abdus Salam was given the Nobel due to political reason. While Abdus Salam's mentor John Clive Ward was ignored entirely.
Now a few interesting points from this book:
-----------------------
Nature of an electron:
-----------------------
An electron is a point particle, i.e. it doesn't have any spatial dimensions. So, what will happen if we try to zoom into an electron? Because an electron carries an electric charge, this seemingly simple question becomes much complicated. The strength of the electric field depends on the distance, known as the inverse square rule or 1/r^2. As distance increase, the strength of the field decreases. But if we keep zooming toward an electron and as the distance approaches zero, the field strength becomes infinite. This Infinite electric field gives an electron a fractal-like structure. Under a microscope (if such a thing exists!), an electron will look like a boob of negative charge in the middle, and a swarm of virtual particles surrounding the boob. No matter how many times we zoom in, the same picture will repeat itself, infinitely.
-------------
Heavy Light:
-------------
We all know the light is nothing but a cloud of the photon. Interestingly, there is another kind of light called the "heavy light," which is the cloud of the Z boson. Inside an atom, the electron and the proton not only exchange photons but something, they also exchange the heavy light or Z boson. As a result, technically, the light we know is a mixture photon and Z, this ratio of this mixing is known as the "Weinberg angle".
--------------------------------------------------
Mass, Superconductivity and broken symmetry:
--------------------------------------------------
What I understood, "symmetry" and "gauge invariance" are somehow related. Gauge invariance means if the "result" of a particular measurement doesn't change regardless of the change of the "method" or the "units" of the measurement. In physics, this aspect of nature always gives rise to massless boson. If for some reason a specific "symmetry" is broken, we say, that particular "symmetry" is hidden, and therefore "gauge invariance" results in massive boson.
One of the strange manifestations of such broken symmetry is "mass". It is difficult to grasp that we have "mass" because nature is hiding something from our human perception!
Another interesting aspect of hidden symmetry is Superconductivity. In case of Superconductivity, nature hides the electrometric force, often known as "symmetry" or "conservation" of electric charge. And, nature does this by giving mass to photons. Inside a Superconductor, a photon is a massive particle; hence electrometric force becomes extremely short range force, so narrow its ranged become as if such force does not exist. What happens to Z boson (as well as W) in a natural world occurs to photon inside a superconductor.
----------------------------------
Longitudinal vs Transverse wave:
----------------------------------
I guess all high school goer knows the difference between this two. But, there is one difference that I never knew before. The transverse wave is a 2D wave, only massless particle like the photon can have such wave. On the other hand, the longitudinal wave is a 3D wave, and only the massive particles can create such wave.
Plasma, as well as the ionosphere of earth, interact with light; consequently, the usual transverse light wave becomes longitudinal when travelling through such cloud of ions. This behaviour of light inside Plasma instigated an idea to physicist Philip Anderson on how the symmetry is broken in the presence of a field, later known as Higgs field.
Similar to classical physics, quantum physics has two eras of development. One goes by the name "Quantum mechanics" and the second one as "Quantum field theory". "Heisenberg inequality" and "de Broglie's equation" etc. are the descriptions of the mechanical view of the quantum world. On the other hand, the first Quantum field theory started with Paul Dirac. Thanks to Julian Schwinger, Richard Feynman, Tomonaga etc. who made their effort to transmute "Dirac equation" into QED (Quantum Electro Dynamics).
But, all modern Quantum field theory is based on something called the "Yang Mill theory." Electroweak theory and QCD/QFD (quantum chromodynamics/quantum flavordynamics) are two such Yang Mill theory.
The name of the book "the infinity puzzle" comes from the fact that, all the Quantum field theory either based on Dirac equation or Yang Mill theory were unsolvable at the very beginning, as their calculation leads to infinity. In the case of QED, Feynman and Schwinger somehow manage to avoid infinity using their unique method of calculation. Their "renormalisation" technique which ultimately made QED practical earned them the Nobel in 1965. But, later same infinity in Yang Mill theory devastated quantum physics. For a very long time, physicist didn't know how to renormalise field equations those based on Yang Mill theory. Many thought future of any Quantum field theory is doomed. Then came the saviour, the brilliant Dutch physicist Gerard 't Hooft who single-handedly solved the renormalisation problem of prevalent Yang Mill theories.
Renormalisation may be the critical milestone for modern Quantum field theory, but for a Yang Mill theory to fit with the experiment, other vital concepts need to be ensembled under a unified description. For Electroweak theory, Steven Weinberg explained the mechanism how the symmetry of nature be broken, hence giving mass to specific bosons: W & Z. While Sheldon Glashow had done the main heavy lifting for Electroweak theory, he outlined the "gauge invariance" nature of the theory which gives rise to W/Z/Photon (four bosons in total). Both of them earned the Noble of 1979 along with Abdus Salam. The author argued that Abdus Salam was given the Nobel due to political reason. While Abdus Salam's mentor John Clive Ward was ignored entirely.
Now a few interesting points from this book:
-----------------------
Nature of an electron:
-----------------------
An electron is a point particle, i.e. it doesn't have any spatial dimensions. So, what will happen if we try to zoom into an electron? Because an electron carries an electric charge, this seemingly simple question becomes much complicated. The strength of the electric field depends on the distance, known as the inverse square rule or 1/r^2. As distance increase, the strength of the field decreases. But if we keep zooming toward an electron and as the distance approaches zero, the field strength becomes infinite. This Infinite electric field gives an electron a fractal-like structure. Under a microscope (if such a thing exists!), an electron will look like a boob of negative charge in the middle, and a swarm of virtual particles surrounding the boob. No matter how many times we zoom in, the same picture will repeat itself, infinitely.
-------------
Heavy Light:
-------------
We all know the light is nothing but a cloud of the photon. Interestingly, there is another kind of light called the "heavy light," which is the cloud of the Z boson. Inside an atom, the electron and the proton not only exchange photons but something, they also exchange the heavy light or Z boson. As a result, technically, the light we know is a mixture photon and Z, this ratio of this mixing is known as the "Weinberg angle".
--------------------------------------------------
Mass, Superconductivity and broken symmetry:
--------------------------------------------------
What I understood, "symmetry" and "gauge invariance" are somehow related. Gauge invariance means if the "result" of a particular measurement doesn't change regardless of the change of the "method" or the "units" of the measurement. In physics, this aspect of nature always gives rise to massless boson. If for some reason a specific "symmetry" is broken, we say, that particular "symmetry" is hidden, and therefore "gauge invariance" results in massive boson.
One of the strange manifestations of such broken symmetry is "mass". It is difficult to grasp that we have "mass" because nature is hiding something from our human perception!
Another interesting aspect of hidden symmetry is Superconductivity. In case of Superconductivity, nature hides the electrometric force, often known as "symmetry" or "conservation" of electric charge. And, nature does this by giving mass to photons. Inside a Superconductor, a photon is a massive particle; hence electrometric force becomes extremely short range force, so narrow its ranged become as if such force does not exist. What happens to Z boson (as well as W) in a natural world occurs to photon inside a superconductor.
----------------------------------
Longitudinal vs Transverse wave:
----------------------------------
I guess all high school goer knows the difference between this two. But, there is one difference that I never knew before. The transverse wave is a 2D wave, only massless particle like the photon can have such wave. On the other hand, the longitudinal wave is a 3D wave, and only the massive particles can create such wave.
Plasma, as well as the ionosphere of earth, interact with light; consequently, the usual transverse light wave becomes longitudinal when travelling through such cloud of ions. This behaviour of light inside Plasma instigated an idea to physicist Philip Anderson on how the symmetry is broken in the presence of a field, later known as Higgs field.
July 22, 2014
There's almost not a wasted word in this book. If you blink while listening, you might lose track of the physics. The author is very good at writing a history of quantum science from QED to looking for the Higgs boson.
He uses the narrative of the scientific players to describe the physics. There is nothing of the physics or the math for which he does not explain before he talks about it. The problem is the author explains the physics at the moment of introduction than assumes that you will understand it and won't explain it to you again.
A large audience of people won't like this book. If you don't follow the physics as he introduces it, the narrative of the history will not be enough to entertain you. He only introduces the physics once and assumes you get it. He covers so much of modern physics he really doesn't have time to repeat his clear explanations more than once.
What I liked about this book he really filled in the details for what has happened since quantum mechanics was fully developed and the Large Hadron Collider has gone online. I had read many books on each and had mostly just walked away with that particles were very small. Now I have a very good feel for what's going on and why the Higgs boson is so important.
His last chapter was a marvelous summary of the book. I only wish he had summarized more of the physics after he explained difficult concepts more frequently.
I don't want to mislead. This book is a very difficult read. Some one with no real background in physics can follow it, but it requires ones full concentration. He covers the topics so well, I'll probably never have to read another history of that period of physics again for a long time.
He uses the narrative of the scientific players to describe the physics. There is nothing of the physics or the math for which he does not explain before he talks about it. The problem is the author explains the physics at the moment of introduction than assumes that you will understand it and won't explain it to you again.
A large audience of people won't like this book. If you don't follow the physics as he introduces it, the narrative of the history will not be enough to entertain you. He only introduces the physics once and assumes you get it. He covers so much of modern physics he really doesn't have time to repeat his clear explanations more than once.
What I liked about this book he really filled in the details for what has happened since quantum mechanics was fully developed and the Large Hadron Collider has gone online. I had read many books on each and had mostly just walked away with that particles were very small. Now I have a very good feel for what's going on and why the Higgs boson is so important.
His last chapter was a marvelous summary of the book. I only wish he had summarized more of the physics after he explained difficult concepts more frequently.
I don't want to mislead. This book is a very difficult read. Some one with no real background in physics can follow it, but it requires ones full concentration. He covers the topics so well, I'll probably never have to read another history of that period of physics again for a long time.
May 25, 2012
This was definitely not what I thought it was going to be. It was more of a history of the various forerunners into the ideas that go behind much of theoretical physics and quantum field theory but contained very little science in it. Frankly I could care less who got noble prizes for what and who got shafted, I am more interested in the theories and current understanding itself which this book only slightly got into.
July 4, 2022
Physicist Frank Close has written about half a dozen good books on physics - mainly particle physics. This one is by far the best in terms of coverage and depth of detail. However, that means it may not be the best choice as an introduction to the subject. In addition to the extensive explanations of most of the important concepts, it's also an extremely well-researched account of how the foundations of the subject were developed. Readers who're looking only for an overview might not really care for the fastidious attention to the details of both the history of the subject and its main concepts.
That said, readers who really want the details will quite probably enjoy the book. But even getting a handle on the meaning of the book's title requires understanding a few basic concepts. Some acquaintance with the ideas of classical quantum mechanics - as developed by physicists like Bohr, Heisenberg, and Schrödinger - is pretty much essential. There are many books that cover the history and concepts of QM, so Close's book duplicates little of that. The real starting point is "quantum electrodynamics" (QED), as formulated by Paul Dirac and others, beginning in the late 1920s.
Historically, physicists have had two distinct ways for thinking about the behavior and properties of light. Isaac Newton was the first to give good reasons to think that light consisted of particles. But about the same time, Christiaan Huygens developed a theory of light as a wave, because its behavior was very similar to that of water waves. For more than two centuries there was plentiful uncertainty about which theory was "correct". In 1905 Albert Einstein interpreted experimental results to support the idea of light as a particle. (That theory is what led to his Nobel Prize, even though he also published his theory of special relativity in 1905.) Light particles became known as "photons".
The theory of electromagnetism originated in the 19th century due to the work of James Clerk Maxwell and others. The theory postulates "electromagnetic fields" and provides equations for both electricity and magnetism in a single theory. Prior to that, electricity and magnetism were generally considered different things. So this is perhaps the first example of the "unification" of two physical theories. The theory of light as both a wave and a particle is a second unification, and QED is a third unification, which encompasses quantum mechanics, electromagnetism, and the description of light as both wave and particle. Further unifications have occurred, and that's a main theme in Close's book. There may be additional unifications yet to come.
Maxwell's equations are similar to equations for water waves - and hence also for light considered as a wave phenomenon. Schrödinger's formulation of QM also involved a sort of wave equation. At that time physicists knew of only two "fundamental particles" - electrons and protons. Particles and fields, back then, were considered to be distinct things. Yet the way that electrons were particles that also played a key role in electromagnetic fields implied there should be a deep connection between particles and fields.
Dirac devised an equation to describe the behavior of electrons moving at relativistic speeds. So it became of prime importance to figure out explicitly in a quantum mechanical theory what the connection - now called QED - was between particles and fields. QED describes and explains the connection. It's also the first example of something more general: a "quantum field theory" (QFT), which is the real subject of Close's book, as indicated by inclusion in the book's subtitle. QFTs are the best way physicists now have for describing simultaneously the behavior of particles and fields. The book goes into the history and details of several more examples of QFTs, of which QED is the prototype.
Although Dirac was in some sense the grandfather of QED, much more work was needed to make a decent theory out of it. What is QED? Probably the best description is found in Richard Feynman's book, entitled simply "QED" (reviewed here). Feynman, together with Julian Schwinger and (independently) Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, developed QED in the late 1940s. Their work was recognized with a Nobel Prize in 1965. QED is basically the theory of the interactions between electrons and photons, thus completing the theory of electromagnetism. QED provides a way to actually calculate the results of experiments that involve interactions between electrons and photons.
Feynman and Schwinger developed different but equivalent ways to do QED calculations that agree spectacularly well with all experimental results to date. Unfortunately, however, there were two problems. The first is that accurate calculations are extremely difficult and laborious. In his book Feynman says that graduate students in physics need 4 years to learn all the necessary details of the calculations. The second problem is that in order to actually get a finite number out of the calculations it's necessary to apply a procedure called "renormalization".
In QED calculations, a critical parameter is the mass of an electron. (After all, the theory is about "electro-dynamics".) Unfortunately, no theory is known to predict an electron's mass; it must be determined from experiments. Finite results of QED calculations can be obtained only by incorporating the experimental number. That's what "renormalization" is. However necessary doing that was, Feynman didn't like it. He called it a "dippy process" and "hocus-pocus". But as things have turned out, renormalization is a necessary process not only in QED but also in more complex quantum field theories (at least for now). This problem of using renormalization to get rid of infinite values explains why Close titled his book "The Infinity Puzzle".
Electromagnetism isn't the only "fundamental" force that physicists are concerned with. There are three others: the "weak" nuclear force, the "strong" nuclear force, and gravity. Everyone's familiar with gravity from personal experience. And Einstein's general theory of relativity (from 1915) is a successful field theory. Gravity, like all field theory forces, is something that pervades the entire universe. So it should be associated with waves, which Einstein predicted in 1916. Gravitational waves are actually very weak, but were nevertheless confirmed (finally) in 2016. There is, however, no confirmed quantum theory of gravity. Consequently, although gravitational particles ("gravitons") have been postulated, there is no quantum theory of them. Gravity is therefore not yet theoretically unified with the other three forces.
But there's been a lot of progress unifying field theories of the weak and strong forces with electromagnetism. Consider first the weak force. It's unfamiliar to most people, since it's mainly manifested only in processes such as the decay of a neutron into a proton and an electron. That's hardly an unimportant process, since it's why nuclear reactors (and atomic bombs) can produce energy, which is usually carried by photons. Photons, themselves, are pure energy and have zero mass. They are said to be "carriers" of the electromagnetic force, and are one type of fundamental particle known as "bosons". The weak force has two types of carriers (called "W" and "Z"), which have significant mass.
The weak force receives a lot of attention in Close's book. In 1967 Steven Weinberg published a paper that showed how electromagnetism and the weak force could be unified in a single theory. The crucial step was to show how it was possible for force carriers W and Z to have mass, while photons remained massless. This fact was a case of "spontaneous symmetry breaking". There's a good discussion of spontaneous symmetry breaking in Leon Lederman's book "Symmetry" (reviewed here). In 1979 Weinberg shared a Nobel Prize with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow for the unification of the weak and electromagnetic forces.
It turns out that the cause of the symmetry breaking can be attributed to the Higgs boson, the existence of which was confirmed only in 2012 after a brief search employing the new Large Hadron Collider - a year after initial publication of Close's book. But this is covered in an Epilog contained in a later version of the book. The Higgs boson, in fact, is also what gives mass to electrons and quarks (and hence to anything, such as atoms, built out of electrons and quarks). The quarks, of which there are 6 different kinds known, are the basic elementary particles that "feel" the strong force. The force carriers of the strong force are called "gluons". Quarks and gluons have a property that's arbitrarily called "color" (although it has nothing to do with the color of light). So the theory of the strong force is called "quantum chromodynamics" ("QCD").
One crucial property of the electroweak theory remained unverified: whether it could be renormalized. The same issue is present in QCD, the theory of the strong force. The fact that the electroweak theory can be renormalized was proven by Gerard 't Hooft in 1971, at first only for massless force carrier particles, but soon after also for massive particles (i. e. W and Z). 't Hooft and his mentor Martinus Veltman finally received a Nobel Prize for this work only in 1999.
As it happens, both electroweak theory and QCD are special types of field theories, known as "Yang-Mills gauge theories". Such theories have a property of "gauge symmetry", which is explained in the Lederman book previously mentioned. Conceptually, an example of gauge symmetry is how accurate earthbound clocks in fact show exactly the "same" time regardless of what time zone they happen to be in - as does a clock somewhere in orbit around the Earth. All such clocks, if accurate enough, remain "in synch" with each other. So which clock is used doesn't matter, as long as one clock is used consistently.
A Yang-Mills theory is based on certain types of mathematical symmetry groups, especially of the type U(1) or SU(n) for some positive integer n. Electroweak theory is based on a group (denoted by "U(1)×SU(2)"), while QCD is based on SU(3). The simplest Yang-Mills theories are known to be renormalizable, including all the field theories except for gravity. The "Standard Model" is the unification of the electroweak theory and QCD, but whether it's renormalizable is unknown. However, the Standard Model is still an "effective field theory", meaning that if the very smallest possible effects are ignored, the best-computed values of physical properties still match the best experimental values.
Frank Close's book is very detailed in recording the history of all the results mentioned above. There is, in fact, at least as much detail about the history as about the actual concepts. As the extremely detailed footnotes testify, Close's research into the history is based on conversations with many of the named physicists and extensive research in available academic archives. Even if readers find the technical details daunting, the history alone is fascinating and worth learning.
That said, readers who really want the details will quite probably enjoy the book. But even getting a handle on the meaning of the book's title requires understanding a few basic concepts. Some acquaintance with the ideas of classical quantum mechanics - as developed by physicists like Bohr, Heisenberg, and Schrödinger - is pretty much essential. There are many books that cover the history and concepts of QM, so Close's book duplicates little of that. The real starting point is "quantum electrodynamics" (QED), as formulated by Paul Dirac and others, beginning in the late 1920s.
Historically, physicists have had two distinct ways for thinking about the behavior and properties of light. Isaac Newton was the first to give good reasons to think that light consisted of particles. But about the same time, Christiaan Huygens developed a theory of light as a wave, because its behavior was very similar to that of water waves. For more than two centuries there was plentiful uncertainty about which theory was "correct". In 1905 Albert Einstein interpreted experimental results to support the idea of light as a particle. (That theory is what led to his Nobel Prize, even though he also published his theory of special relativity in 1905.) Light particles became known as "photons".
The theory of electromagnetism originated in the 19th century due to the work of James Clerk Maxwell and others. The theory postulates "electromagnetic fields" and provides equations for both electricity and magnetism in a single theory. Prior to that, electricity and magnetism were generally considered different things. So this is perhaps the first example of the "unification" of two physical theories. The theory of light as both a wave and a particle is a second unification, and QED is a third unification, which encompasses quantum mechanics, electromagnetism, and the description of light as both wave and particle. Further unifications have occurred, and that's a main theme in Close's book. There may be additional unifications yet to come.
Maxwell's equations are similar to equations for water waves - and hence also for light considered as a wave phenomenon. Schrödinger's formulation of QM also involved a sort of wave equation. At that time physicists knew of only two "fundamental particles" - electrons and protons. Particles and fields, back then, were considered to be distinct things. Yet the way that electrons were particles that also played a key role in electromagnetic fields implied there should be a deep connection between particles and fields.
Dirac devised an equation to describe the behavior of electrons moving at relativistic speeds. So it became of prime importance to figure out explicitly in a quantum mechanical theory what the connection - now called QED - was between particles and fields. QED describes and explains the connection. It's also the first example of something more general: a "quantum field theory" (QFT), which is the real subject of Close's book, as indicated by inclusion in the book's subtitle. QFTs are the best way physicists now have for describing simultaneously the behavior of particles and fields. The book goes into the history and details of several more examples of QFTs, of which QED is the prototype.
Although Dirac was in some sense the grandfather of QED, much more work was needed to make a decent theory out of it. What is QED? Probably the best description is found in Richard Feynman's book, entitled simply "QED" (reviewed here). Feynman, together with Julian Schwinger and (independently) Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, developed QED in the late 1940s. Their work was recognized with a Nobel Prize in 1965. QED is basically the theory of the interactions between electrons and photons, thus completing the theory of electromagnetism. QED provides a way to actually calculate the results of experiments that involve interactions between electrons and photons.
Feynman and Schwinger developed different but equivalent ways to do QED calculations that agree spectacularly well with all experimental results to date. Unfortunately, however, there were two problems. The first is that accurate calculations are extremely difficult and laborious. In his book Feynman says that graduate students in physics need 4 years to learn all the necessary details of the calculations. The second problem is that in order to actually get a finite number out of the calculations it's necessary to apply a procedure called "renormalization".
In QED calculations, a critical parameter is the mass of an electron. (After all, the theory is about "electro-dynamics".) Unfortunately, no theory is known to predict an electron's mass; it must be determined from experiments. Finite results of QED calculations can be obtained only by incorporating the experimental number. That's what "renormalization" is. However necessary doing that was, Feynman didn't like it. He called it a "dippy process" and "hocus-pocus". But as things have turned out, renormalization is a necessary process not only in QED but also in more complex quantum field theories (at least for now). This problem of using renormalization to get rid of infinite values explains why Close titled his book "The Infinity Puzzle".
Electromagnetism isn't the only "fundamental" force that physicists are concerned with. There are three others: the "weak" nuclear force, the "strong" nuclear force, and gravity. Everyone's familiar with gravity from personal experience. And Einstein's general theory of relativity (from 1915) is a successful field theory. Gravity, like all field theory forces, is something that pervades the entire universe. So it should be associated with waves, which Einstein predicted in 1916. Gravitational waves are actually very weak, but were nevertheless confirmed (finally) in 2016. There is, however, no confirmed quantum theory of gravity. Consequently, although gravitational particles ("gravitons") have been postulated, there is no quantum theory of them. Gravity is therefore not yet theoretically unified with the other three forces.
But there's been a lot of progress unifying field theories of the weak and strong forces with electromagnetism. Consider first the weak force. It's unfamiliar to most people, since it's mainly manifested only in processes such as the decay of a neutron into a proton and an electron. That's hardly an unimportant process, since it's why nuclear reactors (and atomic bombs) can produce energy, which is usually carried by photons. Photons, themselves, are pure energy and have zero mass. They are said to be "carriers" of the electromagnetic force, and are one type of fundamental particle known as "bosons". The weak force has two types of carriers (called "W" and "Z"), which have significant mass.
The weak force receives a lot of attention in Close's book. In 1967 Steven Weinberg published a paper that showed how electromagnetism and the weak force could be unified in a single theory. The crucial step was to show how it was possible for force carriers W and Z to have mass, while photons remained massless. This fact was a case of "spontaneous symmetry breaking". There's a good discussion of spontaneous symmetry breaking in Leon Lederman's book "Symmetry" (reviewed here). In 1979 Weinberg shared a Nobel Prize with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow for the unification of the weak and electromagnetic forces.
It turns out that the cause of the symmetry breaking can be attributed to the Higgs boson, the existence of which was confirmed only in 2012 after a brief search employing the new Large Hadron Collider - a year after initial publication of Close's book. But this is covered in an Epilog contained in a later version of the book. The Higgs boson, in fact, is also what gives mass to electrons and quarks (and hence to anything, such as atoms, built out of electrons and quarks). The quarks, of which there are 6 different kinds known, are the basic elementary particles that "feel" the strong force. The force carriers of the strong force are called "gluons". Quarks and gluons have a property that's arbitrarily called "color" (although it has nothing to do with the color of light). So the theory of the strong force is called "quantum chromodynamics" ("QCD").
One crucial property of the electroweak theory remained unverified: whether it could be renormalized. The same issue is present in QCD, the theory of the strong force. The fact that the electroweak theory can be renormalized was proven by Gerard 't Hooft in 1971, at first only for massless force carrier particles, but soon after also for massive particles (i. e. W and Z). 't Hooft and his mentor Martinus Veltman finally received a Nobel Prize for this work only in 1999.
As it happens, both electroweak theory and QCD are special types of field theories, known as "Yang-Mills gauge theories". Such theories have a property of "gauge symmetry", which is explained in the Lederman book previously mentioned. Conceptually, an example of gauge symmetry is how accurate earthbound clocks in fact show exactly the "same" time regardless of what time zone they happen to be in - as does a clock somewhere in orbit around the Earth. All such clocks, if accurate enough, remain "in synch" with each other. So which clock is used doesn't matter, as long as one clock is used consistently.
A Yang-Mills theory is based on certain types of mathematical symmetry groups, especially of the type U(1) or SU(n) for some positive integer n. Electroweak theory is based on a group (denoted by "U(1)×SU(2)"), while QCD is based on SU(3). The simplest Yang-Mills theories are known to be renormalizable, including all the field theories except for gravity. The "Standard Model" is the unification of the electroweak theory and QCD, but whether it's renormalizable is unknown. However, the Standard Model is still an "effective field theory", meaning that if the very smallest possible effects are ignored, the best-computed values of physical properties still match the best experimental values.
Frank Close's book is very detailed in recording the history of all the results mentioned above. There is, in fact, at least as much detail about the history as about the actual concepts. As the extremely detailed footnotes testify, Close's research into the history is based on conversations with many of the named physicists and extensive research in available academic archives. Even if readers find the technical details daunting, the history alone is fascinating and worth learning.
October 17, 2024
Es un tanto extraño porque realmente no explica nada de física sino historias de investigadores y sus descubrimientos, esta interesante más no es lo que esperaba realmente.
July 4, 2012
If you are fascinated at all with recent (and by recent, I mean the latter half of the 20th century) development in physics, and the major players involved, then this book is for you. I am of the personal belief that even though science at its best is about the world, what makes science human is the people behind it. And they, like you or I, have feelings, aspirations, and interests. They also make mistakes, sometimes benign, sometimes tragic.
Despite my general knowledge, this book still has places that roughed me up. I suspect that a casual reader with little/no prior experience will become frustrated, especially as you get further along. That being said, I enjoyed the historical context that the book provides; the fact that most of the events mentioned in the book happened within the author's lifetime, and for those of us younger, a mere half century ago, makes it all the more exciting. Why exciting? Because we've learned so much, so recently. The world is far more fascinating than we have imagined, and in all likelihood more than we could ever imagine.
Also, the story of Salam and Ward would make a drama worthy of theater. I leave the reader of this review the luxury of discovering the story for him/herself.
Despite my general knowledge, this book still has places that roughed me up. I suspect that a casual reader with little/no prior experience will become frustrated, especially as you get further along. That being said, I enjoyed the historical context that the book provides; the fact that most of the events mentioned in the book happened within the author's lifetime, and for those of us younger, a mere half century ago, makes it all the more exciting. Why exciting? Because we've learned so much, so recently. The world is far more fascinating than we have imagined, and in all likelihood more than we could ever imagine.
Also, the story of Salam and Ward would make a drama worthy of theater. I leave the reader of this review the luxury of discovering the story for him/herself.
November 18, 2017
if you remove what was and what could be the book would be good. Re living the history again in another book was frustrating especially this one. Way too many names mentioned. Quantum field theory was mentioned twice despite it appearing on the front cover. I believe the author is a super symmetry theorist as that is mentioned many times throughout the book but without an endorsement. Very good descriptions of the Higgs boson (the book was written a year before the higgs "discovery") throughout the book but not enough to keep interest. One thing I've never read before is that physicists are now looking at the big bang as a particle accelerator to reach higher energies beyond current human technology. Not a book I'd read again.
February 17, 2019
The theories and personalities that took particle physics from the end of World War II to the discovery of the Higgs boson, with reflections on what should and does make for a Nobel prize. Fairly technical language, with Feynman diagrams and facsimiles of notebooks and published papers, although few if any equations in the main text. The author tries to build a story out of the physicists involved but it doesn’t quite come alive, maybe because the cast list is too long. In the end what's stayed with me is Freeman Dyson’s advice to Abdus Salam: “Always give other people more credit than they deserve: [you will] never regret it”.
November 9, 2012
The Infinity Puzzle: Quantum Field Theory and the Hunt for an Orderly Universe was published in late 2011, just as experimental physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) were homing in on the long-sought Higgs particle. In this book, British particle physicist Frank Close successfully meets two very difficult challenges.
First, Close provides a non-mathematical but honest account of the most important developments in theoretical elementary particle physics over the last several decades. It is an account that a reader with no physics background can follow, even as Close avoids reducing his presentation to what has been called "physics porn." (The Higgs is the God Particle! Quantum Theory = Buddhism! Etc.)
Second, Close offers a detailed history of the competing claims to the multiple Nobel Prizes awarded in recent decades as a result of these developments, relying not on the potentially faulty memories of self-interested participants, but on a paper record that includes diaries, conference proceedings, and unpublished papers.
This second challenge involves accurately telling a human story of ordinary vanities and anxieties. Abdus Salam's name was joined to that of Steven Weinberg in the "Weinberg-Salam" theory of electroweak interactions, eventually allowing Salam to share the 1979 Nobel Prize with Weinberg (and Sheldon Glashow). Salam's long campaign for the prize included writing his own letter of recommendation, and sending it to a distinguished friend to forward to to Nobel Prize Committee. Ironically, given Salam's long and fruitful career, he won the prize for a theory to which he may not have deserved having his name attached.
"Tiny" Veltman, a giant-sized Dutch physicist, inspired and guided his brilliant student Gerard 't Hooft to overcome enormous mathematical challenges in proving that a class of theories to which Weinberg-Salam belongs give sensible non-infinite results for experimentally measurable quantities. Veltman felt sidelined by his star student's rapid rise, but eventually joined him in Sweden to share with him the 1999 Nobel Prize.
Peter Higgs's name became attached to a mechanism for which at least six other physicists can also claim some credit. Now Higgs and others wait to find out who will share in a future Nobel. (The Nobel is given only to living persons.)
Then there are those who did not win a Nobel, even as they may have deserved it. They include Salam's close and frequent collaborator John Ward, who may have missed out on the 1979 prize because of his personality, and the Nobel rule that a single prize may not be shared by more than three persons. To make Ward feel worse, he believed that he was also cheated out of being called the Father of the British Hydrogen Bomb.
These are stories we can all understand because, at bottom, they are not fundamentally different from the race for, say, a National Book Award, to say nothing of the Oscars. Even the best physicists are all too human, at least when it comes to seeking recognition and, perhaps, immortality.
Close's other goal -- essentially to give an honest but comprehensible account of quantum field theory -- is far more difficult to attain. The basic problem here is that, at this stage in our development, the only language we humans have been able to learn that Nature also speaks is mathematics. Eugene Wigner spoke of "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences." Conversely, it is only reasonable that the non-mathematical languages we have developed to help us survive are utterly inadequate for describing the behavior of particles that are many billions of times smaller than us. Mathematics, however effective, is not a language we all speak. Like the Bible in Latin, to be read only by priests, it seems that the Laws of Nature are written in a language reserved for a priesthood of science.
So, in explaining their theories to the public, physicists are reduced to giving highly imperfect analogies. In trying to describe how the Higgs field may give rise to the mass, or inertia, of some particles, Close includes an often-told analogy to a person moving through a crowd, slowed down as others approach her and then move away. He recalls watching a film clip of a crowd gathered in an auditorium in Dallas, waiting for John F. Kennedy to arrive. As news of his assassination arrived instead, members of the audience would move towards the announcer to hear him and then move back, to be followed by others who approached and receded.
There is an alternative to relying on such analogies, or to trying to learn all the mathematics necessary to appreciate the real stuff. It is is to give an account that, as the story unfolds, develops along the way the minimum mathematics necessary to follow along. Close avoids this approach, perhaps because of the common advice that the sales of a popular physics book are inversely proportional to the number of equations it contains, and also surely because any serious development of the advanced physics that is Close's subject cannot be followed without first understanding multiple layers of more elementary concepts, in math and physics: it is hopeless to try to understand quantum field theory without first understanding group theory (math) and the quantum mechanics of atoms (physics), which is hopeless to understand without understanding matrices (math) and the classical mechanics of particles and waves (physics), which is hopeless to understand without understanding calculus (math) and kinematics (physics). (Gerald 't Hooft, the 1999 Nobel Laureate, gives a sense of the enormous challenge that awaits the person who sets out on a path of real understanding by offering a list of resources available on the web.)
The master of teaching physics by developing as little mathematics as possible while giving a highly insightful conceptual account was Richard Feynman, probably physicists' own favorite physicist (with the possible exception of Einstein.) I love this video of Feynman, talking about the pleasure of finding out how the world works. He also talks about winning the first Nobel prize discussed in Close's book, and how he hates all such awards. At bottom, they are not that different from an honor society to which Feynman was elected in high school, whose members spent most of their time trying to decide who else to allow into the society.
First, Close provides a non-mathematical but honest account of the most important developments in theoretical elementary particle physics over the last several decades. It is an account that a reader with no physics background can follow, even as Close avoids reducing his presentation to what has been called "physics porn." (The Higgs is the God Particle! Quantum Theory = Buddhism! Etc.)
Second, Close offers a detailed history of the competing claims to the multiple Nobel Prizes awarded in recent decades as a result of these developments, relying not on the potentially faulty memories of self-interested participants, but on a paper record that includes diaries, conference proceedings, and unpublished papers.
This second challenge involves accurately telling a human story of ordinary vanities and anxieties. Abdus Salam's name was joined to that of Steven Weinberg in the "Weinberg-Salam" theory of electroweak interactions, eventually allowing Salam to share the 1979 Nobel Prize with Weinberg (and Sheldon Glashow). Salam's long campaign for the prize included writing his own letter of recommendation, and sending it to a distinguished friend to forward to to Nobel Prize Committee. Ironically, given Salam's long and fruitful career, he won the prize for a theory to which he may not have deserved having his name attached.
"Tiny" Veltman, a giant-sized Dutch physicist, inspired and guided his brilliant student Gerard 't Hooft to overcome enormous mathematical challenges in proving that a class of theories to which Weinberg-Salam belongs give sensible non-infinite results for experimentally measurable quantities. Veltman felt sidelined by his star student's rapid rise, but eventually joined him in Sweden to share with him the 1999 Nobel Prize.
Peter Higgs's name became attached to a mechanism for which at least six other physicists can also claim some credit. Now Higgs and others wait to find out who will share in a future Nobel. (The Nobel is given only to living persons.)
Then there are those who did not win a Nobel, even as they may have deserved it. They include Salam's close and frequent collaborator John Ward, who may have missed out on the 1979 prize because of his personality, and the Nobel rule that a single prize may not be shared by more than three persons. To make Ward feel worse, he believed that he was also cheated out of being called the Father of the British Hydrogen Bomb.
These are stories we can all understand because, at bottom, they are not fundamentally different from the race for, say, a National Book Award, to say nothing of the Oscars. Even the best physicists are all too human, at least when it comes to seeking recognition and, perhaps, immortality.
Close's other goal -- essentially to give an honest but comprehensible account of quantum field theory -- is far more difficult to attain. The basic problem here is that, at this stage in our development, the only language we humans have been able to learn that Nature also speaks is mathematics. Eugene Wigner spoke of "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences." Conversely, it is only reasonable that the non-mathematical languages we have developed to help us survive are utterly inadequate for describing the behavior of particles that are many billions of times smaller than us. Mathematics, however effective, is not a language we all speak. Like the Bible in Latin, to be read only by priests, it seems that the Laws of Nature are written in a language reserved for a priesthood of science.
So, in explaining their theories to the public, physicists are reduced to giving highly imperfect analogies. In trying to describe how the Higgs field may give rise to the mass, or inertia, of some particles, Close includes an often-told analogy to a person moving through a crowd, slowed down as others approach her and then move away. He recalls watching a film clip of a crowd gathered in an auditorium in Dallas, waiting for John F. Kennedy to arrive. As news of his assassination arrived instead, members of the audience would move towards the announcer to hear him and then move back, to be followed by others who approached and receded.
There is an alternative to relying on such analogies, or to trying to learn all the mathematics necessary to appreciate the real stuff. It is is to give an account that, as the story unfolds, develops along the way the minimum mathematics necessary to follow along. Close avoids this approach, perhaps because of the common advice that the sales of a popular physics book are inversely proportional to the number of equations it contains, and also surely because any serious development of the advanced physics that is Close's subject cannot be followed without first understanding multiple layers of more elementary concepts, in math and physics: it is hopeless to try to understand quantum field theory without first understanding group theory (math) and the quantum mechanics of atoms (physics), which is hopeless to understand without understanding matrices (math) and the classical mechanics of particles and waves (physics), which is hopeless to understand without understanding calculus (math) and kinematics (physics). (Gerald 't Hooft, the 1999 Nobel Laureate, gives a sense of the enormous challenge that awaits the person who sets out on a path of real understanding by offering a list of resources available on the web.)
The master of teaching physics by developing as little mathematics as possible while giving a highly insightful conceptual account was Richard Feynman, probably physicists' own favorite physicist (with the possible exception of Einstein.) I love this video of Feynman, talking about the pleasure of finding out how the world works. He also talks about winning the first Nobel prize discussed in Close's book, and how he hates all such awards. At bottom, they are not that different from an honor society to which Feynman was elected in high school, whose members spent most of their time trying to decide who else to allow into the society.
August 4, 2022
I can't comment on the history, but Close gets some really basic physics wrong:
"Imagine that you are in a car, waiting at a red light, in neutral and without its brakes on. Another car, traveling at 30 mph, suddenly hits you in the rear. Your machine will suffer serious damage, to be sure, but you will probably survive, as the recoil of your vehicle takes up much of the energy of the invader. However, if you had collided head-on, each traveling at 15 mph, hence with a relative speed of 30 mph, the results would have been more serious."
Nope. The results would be exactly the same. If my freshmen students wrote this, it would be an instafail. This is the very core of relativity; this is exactly what it means -- the relative speed is all that matters and it's 30 mph in both cases.
"Whereas for air pressure you need just one number at each point to define the weather map, for the electric and magnetic fields you need four: three directions of space and one of time."
Garbage. He is confusing the E and B fields which are each threevectors with the vector potential A which is a fourvector. A scalar field like air pressure also depends on (x,y,z,t) and that does not make it a fourvector. Really disappointing.
"Imagine that you are in a car, waiting at a red light, in neutral and without its brakes on. Another car, traveling at 30 mph, suddenly hits you in the rear. Your machine will suffer serious damage, to be sure, but you will probably survive, as the recoil of your vehicle takes up much of the energy of the invader. However, if you had collided head-on, each traveling at 15 mph, hence with a relative speed of 30 mph, the results would have been more serious."
Nope. The results would be exactly the same. If my freshmen students wrote this, it would be an instafail. This is the very core of relativity; this is exactly what it means -- the relative speed is all that matters and it's 30 mph in both cases.
"Whereas for air pressure you need just one number at each point to define the weather map, for the electric and magnetic fields you need four: three directions of space and one of time."
Garbage. He is confusing the E and B fields which are each threevectors with the vector potential A which is a fourvector. A scalar field like air pressure also depends on (x,y,z,t) and that does not make it a fourvector. Really disappointing.
July 17, 2020
The author has a very pleasant writing style, and with the exception of the beginning and end the book was captivating. For reasons that I don’t understand (so cannot state anything objective), I found it hard to get into initially. But, after 40-50 pages, I was caught. I feel a bit sorry for a few of the historic physicists. At least one was clearly not liked by the author, such that by the time I finished the book, I felt (emotionally) that he did not deserve his Nobel. Then there was Bjorken, whom the author clearly believes has been robbed of a Nobel prize, and ensures that the reader feels the same way. Unfortunately, near the end the author fully abandons science to discuss the politics of CERN and big science surrounding experimental particle physics. This part was downright boring, and I almost abandoned the book. Much of what was written assumes a fair knowledge of physics. I think it may be hard for someone who did not have (at very least) and amateurs’ interest in science to enjoy. But I liked it enough that I have already recommended it to two other physicists I know.
February 27, 2023
Съзнавам, че оценката ми за "Безкраен пъзел" се основава не толкова на качествата на самата книга, а много повече на моите очаквания към нея.
Надявах се да прочета научно-популярна книга за квантова физика, за елементарни частици и за строежа на материята. Това, което получих е книга за историята на откритията в Квантовата електродинамика (КЕД) и Квантовата хромодинамика (КХД), тяхната оспорвана хронология и претенциите на учените, взели участие в тези събития. Както всяка история, тя се пише от победителите и някои от важните участници остават незаслужено пренебрегнати - в случая без Нобелови награди.
Очаквах повече и по-системно представена физика. В книгата има немалко физика, но изборът на автора кои концепции да бъдат по-подробно обяснени ми се струва донякъде случаен.
Книгата би била оценена по достойнство от хора, които имат задълбочени познания по квантова физика и се интересуват от точната хронология и участниците в събитията, довели до важните открития в областта - аз определено не спадам към тази категория.
Надявах се да прочета научно-популярна книга за квантова физика, за елементарни частици и за строежа на материята. Това, което получих е книга за историята на откритията в Квантовата електродинамика (КЕД) и Квантовата хромодинамика (КХД), тяхната оспорвана хронология и претенциите на учените, взели участие в тези събития. Както всяка история, тя се пише от победителите и някои от важните участници остават незаслужено пренебрегнати - в случая без Нобелови награди.
Очаквах повече и по-системно представена физика. В книгата има немалко физика, но изборът на автора кои концепции да бъдат по-подробно обяснени ми се струва донякъде случаен.
Книгата би била оценена по достойнство от хора, които имат задълбочени познания по квантова физика и се интересуват от точната хронология и участниците в събитията, довели до важните открития в областта - аз определено не спадам към тази категория.
July 19, 2020
There is a lot to absorb here and it took me a lot of time to get through it all. I am still quite sure that I will have to through it again for things I probably missed.
The 4 stars are for depth and breadth of ideas covered. As for the way the book is organized and it’s clear presentation of the evolution of the ideas, 3 is more like it.
Perhaps, a better way to present it would have been something along the lines of the following:
Idea X - what it is, why it is important, its interrelationships with ideas Y,Z
History and gossip about the individuals involved, their search down the wrong or right path, the missed opportunities. This too is interesting, but as presented in the book, intertwined with the ideas themselves, it tended to obscure the reader’s understanding of the core ideas.
Perhaps in a future version? As the book’s publication preceded the LHC’s Higgs verification, it could stand a new, updated edition.
The 4 stars are for depth and breadth of ideas covered. As for the way the book is organized and it’s clear presentation of the evolution of the ideas, 3 is more like it.
Perhaps, a better way to present it would have been something along the lines of the following:
Idea X - what it is, why it is important, its interrelationships with ideas Y,Z
History and gossip about the individuals involved, their search down the wrong or right path, the missed opportunities. This too is interesting, but as presented in the book, intertwined with the ideas themselves, it tended to obscure the reader’s understanding of the core ideas.
Perhaps in a future version? As the book’s publication preceded the LHC’s Higgs verification, it could stand a new, updated edition.
July 10, 2018
An excellent history of the development of particle physics from Quantum Electrodynamics through to the demonstration of the Higgs at the LHC. Frank Close steps the reader through each development, organizing the narrative around the work of each leading scientist.
The development is complex with the concepts of the Higgs mechanism and quarks finally leading to Quantum Chromodynamics which explains the strong force. It is surprising how much of the work was done on a mathematical basis that was only tested with the development of big particle accelerators.
The book shows how the scientific process works, with individuals building on the work of others to generate new ideas leading to theories as to how matter is constructed. Experiments then verify or disprove these theories, sometimes providing surprises that lead to new areas of work.
The development is complex with the concepts of the Higgs mechanism and quarks finally leading to Quantum Chromodynamics which explains the strong force. It is surprising how much of the work was done on a mathematical basis that was only tested with the development of big particle accelerators.
The book shows how the scientific process works, with individuals building on the work of others to generate new ideas leading to theories as to how matter is constructed. Experiments then verify or disprove these theories, sometimes providing surprises that lead to new areas of work.
January 8, 2019
I have to admit that Frank Close is my favourite physicist when it comes to literature. This book is yet another masterpiece to not grasp knowledge about quantum physics - its development from the discovery of weak nuclear force, unification of electromagnetism and weak nuclear force, to understand superconductivity, Higgs boson etc. And not to forget it was really a pleasure to read through the mini-biographies of some great particle physicists.
This book is definitely not for starters who do not have any prior knowledge in physics. You will definitely lose interest after some time but if Physics is your love, then this book is a must read to appreciate what describes the 'Cosmic Onion'.
I think I'll end up reading all Close's books. This was my second read of his literature after 'Neutrino'. Next up is 'Antimatter' followed by 'Lucifers Legacy'.
This book is definitely not for starters who do not have any prior knowledge in physics. You will definitely lose interest after some time but if Physics is your love, then this book is a must read to appreciate what describes the 'Cosmic Onion'.
I think I'll end up reading all Close's books. This was my second read of his literature after 'Neutrino'. Next up is 'Antimatter' followed by 'Lucifers Legacy'.
December 4, 2017
The last book I read, many years ago, on particle physics was called The Dancing Wu Li Masters, which was published back in 1979. Much has happened since then, and I picked this book to try to catch up on this interesting field of physics. But all of the concepts and ideas and terms discussed in this book (e.g. broken symmetry, Yang-Mills theory, SU(2) x U(1), gauge invariance, and many others) were a lot to grasp and appreciate for me. I think this is a good book, but I think you will like this book more if it is not your first book (or your first book in a very long time) on particle physics.
September 9, 2020
This books traces the historical development of the Standard Model. I enjoyed it but found it somewhat repetitive and thought that the author spent too much time discussing the details of the various priority claims, especially those dealing with Abdus Salam. I would have enjoyed a deeper explanation of the underlying mathematics and physics of the Standard Model. I did come away inspired to learn more about 't Hooft's proof that the electroweak gauge theory is renormalizable. So in that respect, the book was worth reading. Perhaps the best result an author can hope for is to inspire their readers to learn more.
April 26, 2018
Good but a lengthy book with relatively less physics meat and more of history. The books starts off very interestingly about a relatively unknown t’ Hooft with the bugbear problem of infinities at quantum scale when it comes to measurements. However it digresses into history, conversations and conferences throwing the reader off the hook by easily forgetting about the point of discussion - the infinity problem. 4 stars because I deem it as a physics history book than a book of physics.
December 13, 2017
I found this book both hard going and fascinating.
It tells the story of the last 50 years of atomic physics, culminating in the building of the Large Hadron Collider to search for proof of the Highs boson.
The physics is sometimes rather hard to understand and the story of controversy over Nobel prizes is told very cautiously, I suspect with a conscious effort to avoid sensationalism.
It tells the story of the last 50 years of atomic physics, culminating in the building of the Large Hadron Collider to search for proof of the Highs boson.
The physics is sometimes rather hard to understand and the story of controversy over Nobel prizes is told very cautiously, I suspect with a conscious effort to avoid sensationalism.
March 6, 2018
I thought this book was great, although it did not answer what for me was the important question: why can physicists calculate to nine decimal places of accuracy physical quantities in quantum electrodynamics, yet cannot estimate the cost of building the Superconducting Supercollider in Waxahachie, Texas to the nearest billion dollars?
January 5, 2020
This book opened, and blew, my mind. The Infinity Puzzle explained extremly complicate concepts to a beginner and I understood the concepts fully. The book is also enriched with some of the author's life. I reallu recommend this book to anyone who is interested in quantum physics and the standard model.
March 7, 2018
A few questions of the main subject material have now been answered within the scientific community, making the book a little bit dated; but the read on the historical context of its presented timeline leading to our modern era remains fascinating and a worthwhile read.
May 27, 2020
This is a book about the history and the people who worked to develop modern quantum field theory, including the theories and tge duscoveries of the weak and strong forces plus what is now called the Higgs Boson. It is not a good introduction to the science.
February 6, 2023
This is more of a history of people, Nobel Dreams style, than a physics book per se. But as that it's pretty good, and does a nice job laying out the contributions of the key theoretical players in the lead up to the establishment of the Standard Model.
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