Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword: an apology
- 1 The beginning of the journey to the small: cutting paper
- 2 To molecules and atoms
- 3 The magical mystery of the quanta
- 4 Dazzling velocities
- 5 The elementary particle zoo before 1970
- 6 Life and death
- 7 The crazy kaons
- 8 The invisible quarks
- 9 Fields or bootstraps?
- 10 The Yang-Mills bonanza
- 11 Superconducting empty space: the Higgs-Kibble machine
- 12 Models
- 13 Coloring in the strong forces
- 14 The magnetic monopole
- 15 Gypsy
- 16 The brilliance of the Standard Model
- 17 Anomalies
- 18 Deceptive perfection
- 19 Weighing neutrinos
- 20 The Great Desert
- 21 Technicolor
- 22 Grand unification
- 23 Supergravity
- 24 Eleven-dimensional space-time
- 25 Attaching the superstring
- 26 Into the black hole
- 27 Theories that do not yet exist…
- 28 Dominance of the rule of the smallest
- Glossary
- Index
Foreword: an apology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword: an apology
- 1 The beginning of the journey to the small: cutting paper
- 2 To molecules and atoms
- 3 The magical mystery of the quanta
- 4 Dazzling velocities
- 5 The elementary particle zoo before 1970
- 6 Life and death
- 7 The crazy kaons
- 8 The invisible quarks
- 9 Fields or bootstraps?
- 10 The Yang-Mills bonanza
- 11 Superconducting empty space: the Higgs-Kibble machine
- 12 Models
- 13 Coloring in the strong forces
- 14 The magnetic monopole
- 15 Gypsy
- 16 The brilliance of the Standard Model
- 17 Anomalies
- 18 Deceptive perfection
- 19 Weighing neutrinos
- 20 The Great Desert
- 21 Technicolor
- 22 Grand unification
- 23 Supergravity
- 24 Eleven-dimensional space-time
- 25 Attaching the superstring
- 26 Into the black hole
- 27 Theories that do not yet exist…
- 28 Dominance of the rule of the smallest
- Glossary
- Index
Summary
It is difficult to venture into the world of the ultimately small, or even to talk about it, without a very good understanding of the laws of Nature that govern that world. The forces one finds there determine the way in which the tiny particles we wish to study move about, and also all their other properties. Whether, and how, we can actually observe them will also depend on these forces.
And this is not easy, because the laws of Nature are complicated. More and more experts in this field seek refuge in a kind of mathematical gibberish no ‘normal’ person can follow, unless he or she belongs to the in-crowd. To really appreciate the rock-solid logic of the laws of physics, one actually cannot avoid math. Nonetheless, we physicists feel the need to share the joy of all our beautiful discoveries with whoever wants to listen. We are advised then to avoid all math. This then is what I shall reluctantly do.
It is my intention to provide a narrative of twenty-five years of research on the very tiniest particles of matter. During those twenty-five years, I began to view Nature as an intelligence test to which humanity as a whole has been subjected, as a giant jigsaw puzzle given to us to play with. Time and again, we stumble upon new pieces, large or small, that fit beautifully with those we already have. I want to share with you the sense of triumph we feel at such moments.
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- Chapter
- Information
- In Search of the Ultimate Building Blocks , pp. xi - xivPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996