BOOK OF THE MONTH: OCTOBER 2012

                                                                                         
Title       : Higgs: The Invention and 
                Discovery of the ‘God Particle” 
Author   : Jim Baggott
Pages      : 304 pages
Price       : $24.95
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN       : 13: 9780199603497

Up until very recently, news out of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) regarding the progress of the new Large Hadron Collider (LHC) had been slow in coming, and nary a major discovery had been announced. On 4th July 2012, though, all of that changed. As on that day CERN announced the discovery of nothing less than the Higgs boson, the ‘God particle’.

The potential discovery of the Higgs boson had been one of the principal reasons why physicists were so excited about the LHC; and therefore, within the scientific community the announcement was cause for a major celebration indeed. For most of the general public, however, while the announcement was certainly intriguing, there were many basic questions yet to be answered: Just what was the Higgs boson, and why had it been labeled the God particle? Why were physicists expecting to find it, and what did the discovery really mean? 

Adequately answering these questions was more than what journalists were able to do in their compressed news segments and newspaper articles–and, besides this, it was a task that many journalists were not up to regardless.Jim Baggott’s new book Higgs: The Invention and Discovery of the ‘God Particle’ is meant to remedy this situation and provide the necessary context that the general public needs in order to understand the discovery of the Higgs boson and what it all means.

Baggott first takes us through the history of the development of the Standard Model of particle physics (which theory the Higgs boson is a part). He begins with the discovery that atoms are made up of the still more elementary particles of electrons, protons and neutrons. And then takes us through the discovery of the still more fundamental particles of quarks, leptons and bosons, and the 4 fundamental forces that govern these particles: gravity, the electromagnetic force, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force.

At every step of the way, Baggott is sure to explain what difficulties confronted the understanding of particle physics that was current at the time, what theoretical models were developed to overcome these difficulties, and the empirical evidence that was used to establish which theoretical model won the day. The problem was that there was as yet no empirical evidence that the Higgs field actually exists. 

While the discovery of the Higgs boson solved one major problem with the Standard Model, there are a few others that have yet to be solved—including the hierarchy problem, and the problem of unifying the fundamental forces into a single theory—and Baggott does touch on these issues as well. It is hoped that further work at the LHC may eventually help to resolve some of these problems.

Contents:

Part I  : AN INTRODUCTION TO MATTER AND FORCE
Paet II : A NEW UNDERSTANDING OF MATTER AND FORCE TAKES SHAPE
Part III: THE NEW UNDERSTANDING OF MATTER AND FORCE REACHES COMPLETION
Part IV: THE FUTURE OF MATTER AND FORCE

Appendix: The Elementary Particles of the Standard Model of Particle Physics

Courtesy: http://newbooksinbrief.wordpress.com