Praxis Archives – Page 133 of 181

Open-access moves ahead for physics

Eighty representatives from several major physics publishers, European particle-physics laboratories, learned societies, funding agencies and authors from Europe and the US met at CERN on 7-8 December 2005 for the first discussions on promoting open-access publishing. One of the results was the formation of a task-force mandated to bring action by 2007.

Open access is currently a hot topic at universities, publishing houses and governments, as digitized documentation and electronic networking become more mainstream. The particle-physics community has already implemented one of the possible ways for open access to work, whereby institutional libraries, such as CERN’s, make their own information available on the Internet. The other approach is to work directly with scientific publishers to develop open access to the journals.

The aim of open access is to bring greater benefit to society by allowing electronic access to journals to be free to the public, while being paid for by the authors. The time-honoured practice consisted of publishers financing journals through reader subscriptions and ensuring quality by peer review; however, this model favours the wealthier universities and institutions as they can afford the expensive costs of the journals. The challenge for open access is to maintain the quality guaranteed by academic publishers, while broadening access to the information.

The creation of an open-access task-force comes at a crucial time for the world particle-physics community as 2007 brings the launch of a new major facility, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

Auger observatory celebrates progress

On 10 November, the Pierre Auger Observatory (PAO) began a major two-day celebration at its headquarters in Malargüe, Argentina, to mark the progress of the observatory and the presentation of the first physics results at the International Cosmic Ray Conference in the summer 2005. One of several experiments connecting particle astrophysics and accelerator-based physics, the PAO studies extensive air showers created by primary cosmic rays with energies greater than 10¹⁸ eV. With more than 1000 of the 1600 surface detectors and 18 of the 24 fluorescence detectors currently installed and operating, the observatory will eventually cover 3000 km² of the expansive Pampa Amarilla.

CCEnew5_01-06 — Experiment head Jim Cronin addressing celebration attendees in Malargüe.

Over 175 visitors from the 15 collaborating countries attended the celebration, with guests including heads of collaborating institutions, representatives from supporting funding agencies, delegates from Argentinian embassies, local and provincial authorities, plus press and media teams. On the first day, experiment heads Jim Cronin, Alan Watson and Paul Mantsch presented the history and status of the observatory to the assembled visitors in Malargüe’s Convention Center. This was followed by a ceremony on the Auger campus to unveil a commemorative monument made of glass and stone. Ceremony speakers included Malargüe’s mayor and the governor of Mendoza Province. Guests then retired to a traditional asado that featured local cuisine and entertainment by folk musicians and tango dancers. On the second day, attendees toured the vast observatory site, including surface detectors on the pampa and one of the remote fluorescence detector buildings.

As part of the celebration, the collaboration sponsored a science fair in the observatory’s Assembly Building, organized by four local science teachers for teachers and students from high schools in Mendoza Province. Twenty-nine school groups, many travelling long distances to reach Malargüe, presented research projects on topics in physics, chemistry or technology. A team of PAO physicists judged the displays and awarded prizes to the most outstanding young scientists. In March 2006, the opening of a new high school in Malargüe is anticipated, partial funding for which was secured by Cronin from the Grainger Foundation in the US.

Warped Passages: Unravelling the Universe’s Hidden Dimensions

by Lisa Randall, Allen Lane, Penguin Books. Hardback ISBN 0713996994, £25.
(In the US, HarperCollins, ISBN 0060531088, $27.95.)

They say you should never judge a book by its cover, which is advice worth considering if you’re thinking of buying Lisa Randall’s Warped Passages. The violent pink with the title scrawled graffiti-like across it (in the Penguin edition) makes the book jump off the shelf, screaming “I’m no ordinary popular-science book.” Don’t be put off. Randall does break the mould, but not by filling the book with graffiti. She delivers a bold journey from the origins of 20th-century science to the frontiers of today’s theoretical physics. It’s bold because, despite her protestations that the book is about physics and not personalities, it turns out to be a very personal journey in the company of one of the field’s most cited practitioners.

This is most true at the beginning, where Randall tells us a little about who she is and why she has devoted her life’s work to the science of extra dimensions. She begins with the words: “When I was a young girl, I loved the play and intellectual games in math problems or in books like Alice in Wonderland.” Thereafter, she affords us a glimpse of who she is through her choice of musical snippets at the beginning of each chapter, and the Alice-inspired story of Ike, Athena and Dieter, which unfolds throughout the book, one episode per chapter. The result is that the reader gets not only a competent review of a difficult subject, but also a feeling for what drives someone at the cutting edge of science.

I have to confess that I read the story of Ike, Athena and Dieter from cover to cover before embarking on the book proper, and having done so would recommend that course of action. Should physics cease to be a fruitful career, Randall could perhaps turn her hand to fiction. Coupled with the What to Remember and What’s New sections at the end of each chapter, the story gives a pretty good overview of what the book is about.

The personality that emerges as the book progresses is not the kind of physicist who would be lost for words at a party if asked what she does. As well as being, according to her publisher, the world’s most influential physicist thanks to the citations-index-topping paper she published with Raman Sundrum in 1999, Randall is also a woman with a life. She has broad interests, she is cultured and she climbs mountains in her spare time. In short, she’s the sort of role model science needs.

Clearly conscious of the “no equations” school of science communication, she tries early on to put the reader at ease by promising that the descriptions will never be too complicated. Inevitably she cannot hold this promise throughout, and there are places where even the most dedicated amateur scientists will be baffled, but that is more the nature of the subject than the author. If Niels Bohr thought that quantum mechanics was profoundly shocking, what would he have made of hidden dimensions? In places, Randall goes so far to try to make things easy that the tone verges on the patronizing, and in others, she hides difficult stuff in a “math notes” section at the end of the book. On balance, however, she has done a good job of making a difficult subject accessible.

Bohr is on record as saying to a young physicist, “We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct.” Could the same be true of extra dimensions? If you do not already have an opinion, this book will certainly help you to make up your mind. Don’t let the cover, or the publisher’s hype, put you off.

La quête d’Einstein: “Au prix d’une peine infinie…”

par Jean-Marie Vigoureux, Editions Ellipses. Broché ISBN 2729823557, €19.50.

Un de plus! Cette année 2005 aura vu la multiplication d’ouvrages dédiés à Albert Einstein. Certains développent prioritairement l’histoire de l’homme et de sa vie, d’autres s’intéressent à sa théorie de la relativité.

Le présent livre commence par clarifier la question de la gravitation ´ l’aube du 20e siècle, avec ses grands succès (pendule de Foucault, découverte de la planéte de Le Verrier) et ses échecs (problème à trois corps, périhélie de Mercure), ces derniers semblant indiquer le besoin d’une “nouvelle physique”.

CCEboo7_12-05 — La quête d’Einstein: “Au prox d’une peine infinie…”

La partie de l’ouvrage la plus intéressante est l’introduction qui traite des débats philosophiques sur la notion de force agissant à distance à travers le vide, et sur les concepts d’espace et de temps avec les critiques de Ernst Mach pour qui l’espace est impensable sans la matière nécessaire pour le définir. Alors, Einstein arrive.

Le livre est très documenté, il comprend deux pages entières de bibliographie. Il ne comporte pratiquement aucune équation, même pas les transformations de Lorentz, ce qui est un bon point pour certains lecteurs. Cela limite cependant la compréhension globale, et les propriétés induites par la théorie (dilatation des temps, contraction des longueurs) sont données sans explication claire.

Le choix des conséquences abordées de la relativité est un peu arbitraire. L’auteur ne débat pas de la fameuse équation E = mc², à peine citée, mais 10 pages sont consacrées aux tentatives infructueuses de Joseph Weber pour mettre en évidence les ondes gravitationnelles. Les acquis récents de la cosmologie (fond cosmologique, énergie noire) ne sont pas présentés, et aucune perspective n’est indiquée. La derniére partie relate la vie à Princeton d’un anticonformiste solitaire, berçant le rêve d’une théorie du tout.

Il existe sur le marché des biographies d’Einstein plus vivantes et des exposés plus complets de la relativité et de ses conséquences. Cet ouvrage donne l’impression d’un travail un peu impersonnel d’érudit. Ce qui peut gêner est le point de vue souvent hagiographique: on lit le récit de la vertueuse vie de Saint Albert, savant et philosophe en quête d’harmonie, et le sous-titre du livre “au prix d’une peine infinie” va jusqu’à lui conférer les palmes du martyre… ce qui peut paraître très exagéré.

Malgré tout, le livre vaut par de petits exemples bien expliqués qui aident à concrétiser la démarche d’Einstein vers l’élaboration de sa grande théorie de la relativité.

The Artful Universe Expanded

by John D Barrow, Oxford University Press. Hardback ISBN 019280569X, £20 ($30).

One contender for the premier division of popular-science writers is cosmologist John Barrow. He now has a long list of impressive titles to his credit, notably The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (with Frank Tipler), which introduced a whole new slant on cosmology and has become a classic of modern science, and The Left Hand of Creation (with Joseph Silk), which was one of the first popular books on modern cosmology.

CCEboo8_12-05 — The Artful Universe Expanded

Some arrogant physicists condemn any science that is not quantum mechanics or relativity as being lightweight. This pompous attitude antagonizes scientists in other disciplines, and many non-scientists too. Barrow’s imaginative literary work helps to demolish such preconceptions, breaking down barriers between specialist subjects and showing how far a mathematical approach can reach.

Barrow says that the popularization of quantum physics and cosmology has been well exploited, and aspiring writers should look elsewhere for subject matter. Heeding this advice, The Artful Universe Expanded, an updated and enlarged edition of a book that first appeared in 1995, is a collection of largely self-contained pieces in which scientific arguments illuminate a range of topics that include art, music, evolution and tradition.

The result is a delightfully diverse package of thought-provoking and entertaining articles. Ploughing through even the best popular science demands a certain effort and motivation, but the compact articles in this book are accessible. It is a book to dip into and meet, for example, “Jack the Dripper” – the fractal-inspired Jackson Pollock.

While Barrow is particularly good at explaining the sizes of things, in a few places there is a sense of déjà vu. Barrow’s figure 3.2 on the distribution of masses and sizes in the universe is the same as figure 5.1 in his Between Inner Space and Outer Space, published in 1999; and the customary illustrations of symmetry by Maurits Escher also appear in the book.

A mine of stimulating material, The Artful Universe Expanded anthology is a good choice for travellers or those simply looking for insight, and it is a prolific source of ideas for offbeat talks.

Parallel Worlds: The Science of Alternative Universes and our Future in the Cosmos

by Michio Kaku, Allen Lane, Penguin Books. Hardback ISBN 0713997281, £20.00. (In the US, Doubleday. Hardback ISBN 0385509863, $27.95.)

While reading Michio Kaku’s latest book, Parallel Worlds, I left it for a few days on the coffee table at home. At this time we had a visitor who, although interested in science in general, is not a physicist. After browsing through the book, he started reading it and was disappointed to see it disappear one day when I went away on a trip. He has been inquiring about getting the book back ever since. Although based on limited statistics, this is an excellent recommendation for Parallel Worlds – you do not need to be a physicist to find the book fascinating.

But what does a (non-theoretical) particle physicist think about the book? Well, I really enjoyed it. It is a rather complete book on cosmology for the layman, taking us from Einstein to M-theory in a language that manages to be understandable without being trivial. If you, like me, would like to know the difference between 10- and 11-dimension string theory or find it difficult to explain to your fascinated friends (or to yourself) the concept of the holographic universe, this book will give you plenty of ammunition.

Kaku discusses all of the important theories, observations and experimental results that have shaped our understanding of the universe over the past century, and mainly the past 30 years. A big portion of the book discusses string theory, which is close to Kaku’s heart, in an informative and understandable way. The book is also full of Kaku’s accounts of his favourite science-fiction stories (when he wants to demonstrate a point that happens to have excited the imagination of science-fiction writers) as well as excerpts from the works of poets, other writers and Nobel laureates.

A large portion of the book, as its name suggests, revolves around the many different sorts of parallel universes that might exist and their relation (and possible interaction) with ours. The discussion eventually leads to ideas about how our distant descendants might try to escape a dying or inhospitable universe. Ironically, this was for me the least interesting part of the book, however it does devote a few pages to fascinating subjects such as the question of consciousness, the anthropic principle and religion.

Minor gripes include Kaku’s insistence on not using scientific notation: a trillion electron-volts means to me much less than 1 TeV, and how long exactly is 30 billionths of an inch? Surely Kaku’s intended audience would be less perplexed by 10¹⁸ than by “a million trillion”. Another point is his assertion that particle physicists have introduced “hundreds of point-like particles” to the theory. Three families of four fermions each do not make hundreds of particles.

The book also includes a useful index and a glossary, and has notes with further explanations, which unfortunately I found only after I had finished reading the book. It would have been helpful to include note numbers in the text.

Should you go out and buy this book for Christmas? The answer is yes. Parallel Worlds is an excellent read. Just do not leave it on the coffee table.

Das Einstein-Fenster – Eine Reise in die Raumzeit

by Markus Pössel, Hoffmann und Campe Verlag. Hardback ISBN 3455094945, €30.

CCEboo6_12-05 — Das Einstein-Fenster – Eine Reise in die Raumzeit

“Can only a genius understand Einstein? No…” claims author Markus Pössel on the back cover of his new book, which is aimed at the reader who is interested in modern science. Among the many books to mark the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s annus mirabilis, this one appeals immediately because of its high-quality design and the many colourful photos and illustrations. But can it deliver on its promise?

In the first part we are led to the basic concepts of special and general relativity, following a more phenomenological approach. With the help of facts, many pictures and stories relating to everyday life, Pössel manages to give us a flavour of this new world of extremes. Numerical examples substitute for mathematical equations and give a notion of reality. Minkowski diagrams are introduced and used wherever possible. In the context of general relativity, emphasis is put on the correct development of the geometrical principles, which is done with great care.

The second part covers the applications of relativity: our solar system, gravitational waves, stars, black holes and cosmology. The comparatively short third part is a surprisingly detailed discussion of gravitational-wave detection, which puts the reader at the forefront of this exciting field of research.

The chosen approach to relativity is similar to that of university textbooks, where all mathematical equations are substituted by pictures and numerical examples. This disguises the essential principles and occasionally makes it a cumbersome read. It is also questionable whether the sometimes awkward embellishments to the explanations serve the purpose of clarity. Nevertheless, Pössel takes the reader on an exciting journey through space-time.

“Can only a genius understand Einstein?” With this book in hand, average readers can understand him too, provided their curiosity is strong enough to help them find the necessary patience and stamina.

A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Down

by Robert Laughlin, Basic Books. Hardback ISBN 046503828X, $26 (£15.50).

Despite the fact that the author has a Nobel Prize in Physics, this is rather an easy book to read. While not as funny as Richard Feynman’s jokes, and fortunately not as exquisitely informal (this is an understatement) as João Magueijo’s Faster than the Speed of Light, it is quite nicely written, good humoured and even sprinkled with poetic eloquence. I actually enjoyed reading the innumerable biographical anecdotes (at least the first 50 or so), even though most seemed rather irrelevant for the purpose of the book, which could easily be half as thick without any loss in real content.

Let me do justice to the book by wandering myself. We often hear at CERN that particle physics deals with the most fundamental level, the “ultimate theory”, from which everything else should, in principle even if not in practice, be derivable. But systems above certain levels of complexity exhibit “emergent” laws that cannot be derived through such a “bottom-up” approach. It is particularly interesting to note that superconductivity cannot be derived from fundamental principles, especially when we see how crucially dependent we are on superconductivity to perform our “fundamental” studies at CERN. A little modesty would not harm some particle physicists. We can’t always learn how a toy works by breaking it to pieces; sometimes all we learn is that the broken toy doesn’t work any longer.

This is the central point of Laughlin’s thought-provoking book: there’s a different universe out there, which we can easily see if we care to look, and where certain things are more than the sum of their parts.

This is surely not a new idea. “More is different” claimed Philip Anderson 33 years ago, at a time when Jacques Monod argued that the higher levels of reality are not necessarily determined by the lower levels.

What I enjoyed most in Laughlin’s “different” book were the descriptions of several eye-opening experimental observations – such as the von Klitzing and Josephson effects – which intrinsically depend on collective behaviour (the effects disappear in very small samples) but provide today’s most accurate measurements of the fundamental constants e and h.

Unfortunately these fascinating issues are not really described in much detail, while too many pages, especially at the end of the book, are devoted to less relevant topics, seemingly motivated by polemic fights with “hard-boiled reductionists” who are accused of believing that nothing fundamental is left undiscovered. However, don’t miss chapter 15, which is about a “cast of characters” trying to define what “emergence” means; this is particularly hilarious if you have read Arthur Koestler’s The Call-Girls (1972).

Laughlin’s book is definitely worth reading, although I was disappointed; there is a lot of talking but in the end not much physics really gets reinvented. It is a pity that Laughlin spends much of his energy fighting reductionism rather than detailing his own new ideas. And a little modesty would also not harm his arguments. Emergence and reductionism are equally important in our quest for understanding the (single) universe around us – as Freud said, on psychology and biology, “Some day the two will meet.” If you are interested in these topics, read Koestler’s The Ghost in the Machine (1967) and Stuart Kauffman’s At Home in the Universe (1995).

Symmetry and the Beautiful Universe

by Leon M Lederman and Christopher T Hill, Prometheus Books. Hardback ISBN 1591022428, $29.

A tribute to mathematical genius Emmy Noether (1882-1935) is long overdue. Noether’s theorem, which neatly linked symmetries in physical laws to constants of nature, heralded the most important conceptual breakthrough of modern physics and yet her name is rarely found in books on the subject. Symmetry and the Beautiful Universe attempts to right that wrong.

CCEboo4_12-05 — Symmetry and the Beautiful Universe

This popular-science book is presented as being accessible to “lay readers” and “the serious student of nature”. So is it? Well, any treatise on symmetry begs for pictures but we find very few until near the end, and often we get the proverbial thousand words instead. Also there are more mathematical equations than appear at first sight, as some are embedded in the text. So, I suspect that the going would be easier for the serious student than for lay readers.

The range of topics and styles is humongous, from cartoon character Professor Peabody with angular momentum worthy of a dervish (smoking a pipe), to Feynman diagrams for first-order quantum corrections in electron-electron scattering. The short biography of Noether is good and her theorem is well praised, although the chapter devoted to explaining it is rather long-winded.
More than once the reader is first given an esoteric example of some process or other and only later a more familiar example; momentum conservation starts with radioactive neutron decay and goes on to colliding billiard balls. Then there are “gedanken” experiments. These are familiar devices to scientists but will a lay reader believe that space is isotropic because a hypothetical experiment is said to show that it is? And sometimes the book is mystifyingly US-centric. What are EPA rules? And why is Kansas special?

However, the undeniable enthusiasm of the authors for their subject, indeed for almost any subject, shines brightly throughout. Even leaving aside the 60 or so pages of notes and appendix, the book brims over with facts, figures and fun fictions, often straying far from the subject of symmetry. I estimate that a smart cut-and-paste editor could produce three good books out of the material on offer, each at a quite different level. Find your own.

Reviewing a book that has one Nobel laureate as an author and two among the constellation of stars glowingly quoted on the dust jacket is a daunting task. I was once told that “astounding” conveys an acceptable amalgam of the polite and the honest when one is overwhelmed. This book is astounding.

Homestake poised to become a goldmine for scientific research

A new frontier in experimental science was crossed in October when the state of South Dakota committed $20 million to pave the way for its acquisition and conversion of the Homestake Mine into a multidisciplinary underground laboratory, which it will operate until at least 2012. This boost from the state also aids longer-term planning, helping to position Homestake as a possible home for the proposed Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL). The transfer of the property is scheduled to take place on 15 December.

CCEnew1_12 — The Homestake Mine in South Dakota, where the shafts extend underground to 2500 m.

The 125 year-old Homestake Mine, which was once the largest goldmine in the western hemisphere, is the deepest in North America, reaching 2500 m below ground. It became well known as the site of the first solar-neutrino experiment, which ran continuously from 1967 to 1994 and earned Raymond Davis the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2002. In May 2004 the company that owned the mine announced that it would turn off the pumps that prevent the mine from flooding.

The state of South Dakota’s funding will re-establish access into the mine, pump out the accumulated water and establish an operating laboratory at the 1500 m level, where Davis’s experiment was located. The lower levels will be developed in later years. Experimental Letters of Interest for short- and long-term experiments are now being solicited from the international community. The first experiments are scheduled to begin in 2007.

These depths provide the low-background environment needed to conduct a spectrum of physics experiments including studies of neutrinoless double beta decay and dark-matter searches. With more than 500 km of tunnels, the mine provides safe access to various depths, can accommodate large detectors, and offers expandable spaces to sustain evolving experiments over decades.

Homestake is one of two finalists selected by the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the location of a future DUSEL; the other site is Henderson Mine in Colorado. Both proposals have received grants of $500,000 from the NSF to develop conceptual design reports. The site for DUSEL should be chosen in late 2006.

For the first time, a single site dedicated to science will house an array of experiments spanning the disciplines of particle and nuclear physics, geology, hydrology, engineering, geomicrobiology and biochemistry. Forty years after Davis installed his solar-neutrino detector at Homestake, a new generation of experimentalists will avail themselves of the same site for this spectrum of modern-era experiments. As DUSEL is developed in the coming years these experiments will delve even deeper underground in a quest to answer some of the greatest scientific mysteries of our time – from dark matter, neutrinos and nucleosynthesis to probing the limits of life.

Physics, astrophysics and earth sciences are anticipated to be among the first disciplines to establish experiments. As well as experiments on neutrinoless double beta decay and searches for relic dark matter, large detectors will study proton decay and be used for long-baseline neutrino experiments, ultimately to probe neutrino mass, hierarchy and possible leptonic CP violations.

The diverse geology at Homestake, with the existing deep drifts and boreholes, will be an equally big boon for earth scientists. For the first time, they will have access to more than 34 km³ of the Earth’s crust to study the subterranean environment. Geomicrobiologists will investigate the genome and the limits of life in extreme environments; hydrologists will study fluid flows through rocks; geochemists will explore the formation of minerals; and at the intersection of physics and geology, scientists will measure geoneutrinos emanating from the Earth’s crust.

The Homestake project is a partnership between the scientific community and the South Dakota Science and Technology Authority, which will oversee the conversion and manage the mine. The scientific team is headed by Kevin Lesko of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley. The early implementation plan will create an operational facility in advance of the NSF selection process and be the basis of Homestake’s staged approach to creating DUSEL.

• For further information see http://neutrino.
lbl.gov/Homestake/LOI.

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