Lederman explains in the book why he gave the Higgs boson the nickname "The God Particle":
This boson is so central to the state of physics today, so crucial to our final understanding of the structure of matter, yet so elusive, that I have given it a nickname: the God Particle. Why God Particle? Two reasons. One, the publisher wouldn't let us call it the Goddamn Particle, though that might be a more appropriate title, given its villainous nature and the expense it is causing. And two, there is a connection, of sorts, to another book, a much older one...
In 2013, subsequent to the discovery of the Higgs boson, Lederman co-authored, with theoretical physicist Christopher T. Hill, a sequel: Beyond the God Particle which delves into the future of particle physics in the post-Higgs boson era. This book is part of a trilogy,
with companions, Symmetry and the Beautiful Universe and
Quantum Physics for Poets (see bibliography below).
Historical context
Fermilab director and subsequent Nobel physics prize winner Leon Lederman was a very prominent early supporter – some sources say the architect[6] or proposer[7] – of the Superconducting Super Collider project, which was endorsed around 1983, and was a major proponent and advocate throughout its lifetime.[8][9] Lederman wrote his 1993 popular science book – which sought to promote awareness of the significance of such a project – in the context of the project's last years and the changing political climate of the 1990s.[10] The increasingly doomed project was finally shelved that same year after some $2 billion of expenditure.[6] The proximate causes of the closure were the rising US budget deficit, rising projected costs of the project, and the cessation of the Cold War, which reduced the perceived political pressure within the United States to undertake and complete high-profile science megaprojects.
List of chapters
A simulated event at the Large Hadron Collider. This simulation depicts the decay of a Higgs particle following a collision of two protons in the CMS experiment
Chapter 1: The Invisible Soccer Ball: This chapter uses a metaphor of a soccer game with an invisible ball to depict the process by which the existence of particles are deduced.[11] Also, in this chapter Dr. Lederman gives a brief background story of what led him to particle physics.[12]
Chapter 2: The First Particle Physicist: In a fictional dream, Dr. Lederman meets Democritus, an ancient Greek philosopher who lived during the Classical Greek Civilization, and has a conversation (a Socratic dialogue) with him.[13]
Chapter 4: Still Looking for the Atom: Chemists and Electricians: This chapter covers physicists from the 18th century onward including J.J. Thomson, a physicist, and John Dalton, and Dmitri Mendeleev both chemists (1834–1907).[15]
Chapter 5: The Naked Atom: This chapter paints a picture of the shift from classical physics to the birth and development of quantum mechanics.[16]
Chapter 7: A-tom!: The book uses the word "A-tom" to refer to Democritus' fundamental, uncuttable particle. This chapter covers the discovery of the fundamental particles of the Standard Model.[18]
^Abbott, Charles (June 1987). "Super competition for superconducting super collider". Illinois Issues. p. 18. Retrieved 16 January 2013. Lederman, who considers himself an unofficial propagandist for the super collider, said the SSC could reverse the physics brain drain in which bright young physicists have left America to work in Europe and elsewhere.
^Kevles, Daniel J. (Winter 1995). "Good-bye to the SSC: On the Life and Death of the Superconducting Super Collider"(PDF). Caltech Engineering & Science. 58 (2): 16–25. Retrieved 1 May 2013. Lederman, one of the principal spokesmen for the SSC, was an accomplished high-energy experimentalist who had made Nobel Prize-winning contributions to the development of the Standard Model during the 1960s (although the prize itself did not come until 1988). He was a fixture at congressional hearings on the collider, an unbridled advocate of its merits [...]. (permalink)
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