by Gian Francesco Giudice, Oxford University Press. Hardback ISBN 9780199581917, £25 ($45).
If you are of the opinion that working physicists do not care about the history of their discipline or that theorists, like Gian Giudice, have no interest in the details of the experimental machines and detectors, this book will come as a surprise. The same is true if you share the view that it is not possible to describe the frontiers of modern physics – including the most speculative ones – to non-experts in a way that is both faithful and comprehensible. This book does all of that and is enjoyable reading, with the important information that it carries mixed in with many fun facts and anecdotes of all sorts. Not to mention the spot-on explanatory metaphors that are distributed profusely throughout almost every chapter.
One quality of this book is its comprehensive character, with its contents in three approximately equal parts. The first gives a brief but inspired history of particle physics, from J J Thomson’s discovery of the electron up to the setting of the Standard Model, without neglecting James Clark Maxwell, quite appropriately, or even Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton. In the author’s words, the expected “results for the LHC” – surely the main inspiration of the book – “cannot be appreciated without some notion of what the particle world looks like”. The central section “describes what the LHC is and how it operates” – no more or less than that – in a successful effort to make clear the astonishing technological innovations involved in the LHC enterprise. This is useful reading for everybody, including politicians.
Last but not least, the third section “culminates with an outline of the scientific aims and expectations of the LHC”, addressing the central open issues in particle physics and beyond. Here Giudice is also not afraid to venture into the description of interesting theoretical speculations, while always keeping a sober view of the overall subject. “We do not know what lies in zeptospace and the LHC has just started its adventure” is the very last sentence of the book, which I fully support. By the way, “a zeptometre is a billionth of a billionth of a millimetre”, not quite but almost the distance that will be explored for the first time by the LHC: hence “zeptospace”.
The coming of the LHC is certainly the main inspiration of the book. The awe and excitement brought on by the start of LHC operation exudes from all its pages. But I think there is more to it than that. There is a view of what I like to call “synthetic physics”, that is the physics that aims to describe nature, or at least some part of it, in terms of few principles and few equations. In many respects the book pays tribute to “synthetic physics”. This is what determines the unity of its style and of its arguments. To whom do I recommend its reading? To everybody, experts or non-experts. I would in particular encourage young people, starting from those who are nearing the end of their high-school studies. I am sure that their efforts will be highly rewarded, not to mention the pleasure they will find. I believe, and I certainly wish, that this book will become required reading for anyone interested in scientific human endeavour, in the reality of our world.
