by Mel Month, Avant Garde Press. ISBN 1410732533, $28.95.
This book attempts to unravel a complicated politico-scientific tapestry, but in trying to unpick some tricky knots it creates a few new tangles of its own. In 1982 the US high-energy physics community organized a meeting at Snowmass to look at the future of national high-energy physics. After riding the crest of a wave for 30 years, the community felt in danger of falling into deep water. Across the Atlantic, CERN’s proton-antiproton collider had not yet discovered the W and Z carriers of the weak nuclear force, but the writing on the wall was clear (the crucial discovery came in 1983).
The US community was pushing for an ultra-high-energy proton collider to probe a distant energy frontier and search for the “Higgs mechanism” – which drives the subtle electroweak symmetry breaking and ensures that the weak W and Z carriers are much heavier than the massless photon that mediates electromagnetism. Thus Snowmass helped paint the wagon for the US Superconducting Supercollider (SSC), which was to emerge as the nation’s bid to regain particle-physics superiority. But by 1993 the global financial climate had cooled and the SSC was sacrificed, leaving the field clear for CERN’s LHC to become the world focus for high-energy physics.
Among those at Snowmass in 1982 was Mel Month of the Brookhaven National Laboratory and founder of the US Particle Accelerator School. One lunchtime, Month blurted out his views on the current US physics scene. These innocent remarks were not meant for general consumption, but bosses have long ears and there was an abrasive run-in. Month’s career then became slow-tracked. A heavy chip on the shoulder can be difficult to offload. To help, Month compiled this 600-page book, in which he portrays himself as “Mickey”, a highly motivated but politically naive young Brookhaven researcher.
The first half of the book depicts the evolution of particle physics in the second half of the 20th century as seen through Brookhaven eyes. Brookhaven was the site of major postwar US high-energy machines, which from 1960 to 1975 made many discoveries and reaped an impressive Nobel harvest. But as the US continued to disperse its high-energy physics effort, Brookhaven began to lag behind in this research sector. Its contender, the ISABELLE proton collider, was overshadowed by other US plans and hampered by difficult technology for superconducting magnets to guide its high-energy protons. Eventually ISABELLE had to make way for the new SSC, and Brookhaven looked to have missed the boat. (Ironically, when the SSC was finally cancelled, ISABELLE was reincarnated as the RHIC high-energy nuclear collider now in full swing at Brookhaven.) The laboratory’s stock tumbled further in the 1990s with unwarranted scaremongering of a tritium leak from its nuclear reactor.
The evolution of particle physics as seen from Brookhaven is a little like the British view of Europeanism – interesting but distorted because of evolved isolation. Month attributes blame, while his skewed overview brings some fresh insight and provides some vivid quotes: “Always the bridesmaid and never the bride”, referring to CERN’s early history; and for the SSC, “Like Lady ISABELLE a decade earlier, this dressed-to-kill damsel turned out to be a flash in the pan”.
The survey would be more valuable with a detailed index to help track through the intricate history. However, as the book calls itself a “historical novel”, none is supplied. The “novel” content is mainly confined to the second half of the book, where Month imagines Mickey interviewing the “Players”, the major characters in the book, most of whom are ex-Brookhaven management.
The book is difficult to read without an insider’s knowledge of particle physics. In the very first paragraph, BNL (for Brookhaven National Laboratory) appears without explanation, the first of much in-your-face shorthand, not all of which gets sorted out in the glossary. There are also some inaccuracies, such as: “1993 – Rubbia forced to resign as CERN director-general”.
In the push and shove of ruthless competition, most people experience at some time the bitterness of career injustice. These unpleasant episodes can be sublimated into fresh motivation, or simply filed. This book looks to have been a catharsis for Month, but does so much subjective detail need to be displayed?
