Michael Brooks, consultant
Physicist Sean Carroll proves himself to be equal to the challenge of explaining the Higgs boson in The Particle at the End of the Universe
THE Higgs boson might be the most misrepresented particle in the universe. Contrary to popular conception, for instance, it's not the source of all our mass. If the Higgs suddenly ceased to exist, you wouldn't lose much weight.
Not that you'd want to do without it altogether. As Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology, points out in this excellent book, the Higgs does make a significant contribution to the mass of the electron, and a lighter electron would undo all the chemical bonds in your body, causing you to explode.
The Particle at the End of the Universe provides a masterful coda to all the Higgsteria of the past few months. Why, exploding bodies aside, were physicists so interested in making sure the Higgs boson was there? Not because it was ever going to be directly useful, Carroll says, but because discovering exactly how nature works is a quest that "leads to all sorts of good places".
This is a refreshingly straightforward, explicatory book. It's not dressed up as a personal narrative of discovery or a book on the meaning of it all. It's somehow old-fashioned in the best possible way, reminiscent of Richard Feynman's QED, Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene or Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time.
Like those books, it does sometimes require effort and concentration. But Carroll is unapologetic - particle physics is hard: "It's not supposed to be simple; we're talking about a series of discoveries that resulted in multiple Nobel Prizes."
It's the same refreshing honesty that Peter Higgs himself has shown. When, in 1993, the UK science minister offered prizes for the best explanation of the Higgs that could fit on a side of A4, the man after whom it's named refused to take part. His objection was that all the analogies out there fail in some way. Indeed, why should physics that requires half a century and billions of pounds of investment to bring to fruition be easy to grasp? Nature is indifferent to our love of metaphors.
It's surprising then, that this book is so hard to put down. That's testament to Carroll, a practising scientist, also being a gifted writer. Carroll got into science because, aged 10, he discovered the science section of his local public library in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. His reading there, on the big bang, black holes and particle physics, made such an impression that he decided to become a physicist. This book could well pass the favour on; it's impossible to read it without feeling that being a physicist - or perhaps any scientist - is the best of all possible jobs.
There's even some sex. Carroll asked a researcher at CERN if it was true that researchers working on the CMS and ATLAS detectors really don't know each other's results, so that the data could be analysed blind. "Are you kidding?" came the response. "Half of ATLAS is sleeping with half of CMS. Of course they know!"
What's still not known is the future of big physics. It is expensive, and governments are poor these days. It is entirely possible that, by the time Carroll's inspired younger readers begin to contribute to physics, they will find themselves employed at privately funded facilities.
Nonetheless, there will be those working at the Intel Steve Jobs Memorial Telescope or the Large Facebook Collider who look back and fondly remember that, for them, it all started here, with an insight into the grandest of human endeavours, the story of an obscure little particle and the reassurance that physicists do get some action in the sack.
Book information
The Particle at the End of the Universe: How the hunt for the Higgs boson leads us to the edge of a new world by Sean Carroll
Oneworld/Dutton
?16.99/$27.95
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