Praxis Archives – Page 140 of 183

The shock of the known

Naturally, researchers take for granted that which is known, and instead focus on the unknown. Indeed, when I was at CERN working on the UA2 experiment, everyone was obsessed wih those areas of physics that were not yet understood. The public is also interested in those scientific subjects that still remain a mystery – where is the Higgs boson? Is string theory correct? What is dark matter? So when I left particle physics and became a science journalist, I continued to concentrate on unexplored territory. It was those research topics at the frontiers of knowledge and at the centre of controversy that inevitably resulted in the best stories.

CCEvie1_01-05 — Simon Singh, photographed by Phil Green.

However, when I sat down to write Big Bang, I decided to adopt a different approach – I wanted to celebrate how much we do know, and glory in the fact that we belong to the first generation of humans that have access to a coherent, consistent, compelling and verifiable model of the universe. The public is told so much about contentious issues, such as arguments over the existence, type and quantity of dark matter, that they probably have the impression that cosmologists know very little about the universe. In fact, I think the public would be staggered if they realized how much we do know.

The fact that the universe is expanding might seem dull to those of us within science, but to outsiders it probably sounds incredible. I suspect that the majority of the public perceive the expansion of the universe as a weird new hypothesis that will be overturned in a few years. If only they realized that the expansion of the universe was detected more than 75 years ago and has since been measured in detail and verified in a multitude of ways, then they might begin to engage with the staggering and profound implications of an expanding cosmos.

As well as spreading the gospel of our understanding of the universe, including the Big Bang model, I also wanted to show how superior models emerge in science and how they are eventually accepted, regardless of how controversial they are initially and no matter how powerful their detractors might be. Although we should be celebrating Albert Einstein in the centenary of his annus mirabilis, it is still worth noting that he vehemently opposed the Big Bang model when it was explained to him by the Belgian cosmologist (and priest) Georges Lemaître. Einstein told him, “Your calculations are correct, but your physics is abominable.” But a few years later, the observations showed that Lemaître was right, and Einstein had to concede defeat in the light of reality. The Big Bang model turned out to be basically correct and remains the best game in town.

Despite all the successes of modern cosmology and the Big Bang model, my book does feature an epilogue that explains the ways in which the model is incomplete. There are, of course, still aspects of our universe that cause bewilderment and arguments among cosmologists. For example, was there an inflationary period in the early universe, what is dark matter, what is dark energy and what is the fate of the universe? Such questions currently belong to the realm of speculation, and answering them sometimes seems impossible.

However, perhaps my book offers a note of optimism for cosmologists, because they can take heart by looking back through the history of their subject. After all, what now seems completely obvious was itself mysterious to scientists of the past. There was a time when nobody had any idea of how to measure the distances to the nebulae, but in 1923 Edwin Hubble solved the puzzle and showed that many of them were remote galaxies. He relied on the periodic variation in brightness of a type of star, known as a Cepheid variable, which he spotted in the Andromeda Nebula. The time between peaks in brightness betrays the absolute brightness of a Cepheid star and this could be compared to its apparent brightness in order to deduce its distance – and the distance to the Andromeda Nebula that it inhabited. Today, measuring the distances to galaxies is still not routine, but it is clearly no longer impossible.

Perhaps the best example of a once impossible problem that soon became trivial was discussed in 1835 by the French philosopher Auguste Comte. He had tried to identify areas of knowledge that would forever remain beyond the wit of scientific endeavour. In particular, he thought that some qualities of the stars could never be ascertained. “We see how we may determine their forms, their distances, their bulk, and their motions, but we can never know anything of their chemical or mineralogical structure.” In fact, Comte would be proved wrong within a few years of his death, as scientists began to discover which types of atom exist in the Sun.

CERN, the violin and the music of the spheres

Music has always seemed to attract physicists, perhaps because its clear and complex mathematical structure is somehow familiar, perhaps because creativity in music is refreshingly different from that in science. This link can be traced back to the ancient Greek philosophers, such as Heraclitus and Pythagoras, who discovered the mathematical basis of harmony and applied it to the movements of the planets.

CCEmus1_01-05 — The World Year of Physics has been designated Einstein Year in the UK.

In modern times at CERN, Vicky Weisskopf (director-general 1961-1964) was a gifted pianist and famously said, “When things get tough, there are two things that make life worth living: Mozart, and quantum mechanics.” One of his successors, Herwig Schopper (director-general 1980-1988), is also a keen pianist. It was music that brought together Jack Steinberger and Konrad Kleinknecht to work on CP violation in the K meson system. Steinberger played the flute and Kleinknecht the violin in the CERN chamber orchestra; over a beer after a rehearsal in 1965 the two agreed to collaborate. The collaboration extended to many memorable chamber-music sessions at Steinberger’s house, involving Heinrich Wahl, Jürgen May, Günther Lütjens, Yves Goldschmidt-Clermont and others.

Kleinknecht also forms a link to another great physicist-musician prominent in the pioneering days of CERN, Werner Heisenberg, a very fine pianist; Kleinknecht was part of a small orchestra brought together to celebrate Heisenberg’s 60th birthday by accompanying him in a performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto, K488.

Turning specifically to the violin, many physicists, including the author of this article, have been fascinated by it, and found relaxation and fulfilment in playing. Of these, the most famous is Einstein. His violin rarely left his side and he played it often, at an accomplished level, throughout his life, saying that “life without playing music is inconceivable to me”. Max Planck was also a highly gifted pianist, composer and singer. Lise Meitner once remembered a musical evening at the Plancks’ house in Berlin, in which Planck, Einstein and a professional cellist played Beethoven’s Piano Trio in B-flat major. “Listening to this was marvellously enjoyable, despite a couple of unimportant slips from Einstein… Einstein was visibly filled with the joy of the music and smiled in a light-hearted way that he was ashamed of his dreadful technique. Planck stood quietly by with a blissfully happy face and, hand on heart, said ‘That wonderful second movement!’ ”

CCEmus2_01-05 — Einstein must be the most famous of violin-playing physicists.
Image: Emil Orlick/AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives.

Einstein was an inveterate concert-goer. He attended the famous debut of Yehudi Menuhin with the Berlin Philharmonic under Bruno Walter, in which the 13-year-old Menuhin was soloist in a programme of the Bach, Beethoven and Brahms concertos that would be nowadays inconceivable. Einstein was so moved by Menuhin’s playing that he rushed into the boy’s room after the performance and took him in his arms, exclaiming “Now I know that there is a God in heaven!” He once said that had he not been a physicist, he would have been a musician: “I often think about music. I daydream about music. I see my life in the form of music.”

The other side of the coin is violinists who have been interested in physics. In the modern age, the well known American violinist, Joshua Bell, has a great interest in physics and has collaborated with physicists and engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in a project to enhance and expand the violin electronically. There is indeed a curious though tenuous link between Bell and Einstein. The great virtuoso Bronislav Huberman was a friend of Einstein, and visited him at his home in Princeton, no doubt together with his great Stradivarius violin, known as the “Gibson” Strad, made in 1713 during the “golden period” of his work. One day, the Strad was stolen from Huberman’s dressing room at Carnegie Hall in New York. It disappeared and was lost for more than 50 years, during which time the thief played it around the backstreet bars of New York City until he died. In 2001, Bell acquired the “Gibson” for almost $4 million and now uses it as his sole concert instrument.

Given their friendship and mutual interest, it seems likely that Huberman would have allowed Einstein to play this marvellous instrument, providing a link between Bell and Einstein through this great masterpiece of the violin-maker’s art.

CCEmus3_01-05 — Jack Liebeck and Katya Apekisheva rehearse in the main auditorium before a concert to celebrate CERN’s half-century.

Another violinist who is keenly interested in the work of CERN is Jack Liebeck, one of Britain’s outstanding young violinists. Liebeck, who was born in 1980, has been playing the violin since he was eight. He made his first public appearance playing the young Mozart on BBC television at the age of 10. Liebeck plays one of the finest instruments by another great maestro of Italian violin-making, Giovanni Battista Guadagnini. The violin dates from 1785 and is known as the “ex-Wilhemj”.

On 11 October 2004 Liebeck played with Russian pianist Katya Apekisheva in the CERN Auditorium. The occasion was a special gala concert sponsored by the UK Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council as a tribute to the CERN staff on the organization’s 50th anniversary. In the morning, Liebeck toured CERN and visited the locations where the ATLAS and CMS detectors are being installed for the Large Hadron Collider. The concert that evening featured an electrifying performance of the Prokofiev Sonata No. 1, as well as very fine readings of the Debussy Sonata and Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata. After a brief tuning-up variation on “Happy birthday to you”, the pair played a beautiful encore: “Vocalise” by Rachmaninov. A further concert in honour of CERN’s 50th anniversary, sponsored by the UK’s Central Laboratory of the Research Councils, was held at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire on 9 December, when Liebeck was accompanied by the British pianist Charles Owen.

Hardly was CERN’s birthday over when an even bigger cause for celebration arrived at the start of 2005 with the World Year of Physics, designated by the Institute of Physics as Einstein Year in the UK. Liebeck is embarking on a world tour giving concerts to celebrate this, and is also accompanying the author on a world lecture tour in which descriptions of Einstein’s universe and modern ideas in particle physics, including superstrings, will be illustrated with demonstrations on Liebeck’s Guadagnini and specially commissioned music from two young British composers, Emily Hall and Anna Meredith. Thus the long tradition of cross-fertilization between physics and music continues.

Einstein’s own words form a fitting conclusion: “I am happy because I want nothing from anyone. I do not care for money. Decorations, titles, or distinctions mean nothing to me. I do not crave praise. The only thing that gives me pleasure, apart from my work, my violin, and my sailboat, is the appreciation of my fellow workers.”

Faster Than The Speed of Light – The Story of a Scientific Speculation

by João Magueijo, Arrow Books. Paperback ISBN 0099428083, £8.99.

Cosmologist João Magueijo certainly believes in rocking the boat. This is his first book, but he is happy to propose theories that challenge the fundamentals of physics. He also challenges the institution of science itself – so much so, that a long-time collaborator had to point out that a reference letter for a PhD student was not an appropriate forum for insulting the establishment.

So what is Magueijo’s theory? Simply, that the speed of light, one of the fundamental constants in our model of the universe, may not be as constant as we have assumed. Working through explanations of relativity and modern cosmology – often featuring a cow called Cornelia – he introduces the science of his Variable Speed of Light (VSL) theories, but it is the personal element that makes the book unusual. Here, Magueijo really brings us two books: one is popular science, and the other is about the day-to-day process of science, a human drama full of dreams, allegiances and betrayals. This section is likely to surprise members of the public as much as it makes scientists chuckle (or grimace) in sympathy with the story Magueijo has to tell.

In an unusual display of emotion, Magueijo attacks everything from the management of his university (which he suggests blowing up for the good of science) to journal reviewers (whose reports, he claims, often contain only 1% science). He avoids sounding bitter only because he compliments the same groups he criticises, remarking that his university has “perhaps the best scientific environment in the world”, despite his views on how it is run.
The book ends on an uncertain note, its VSL theories widely discussed but as yet unproven. Magueijo is not precious about his creation, or worried about humiliation if he is proved wrong. He believes that trying out new ideas is crucial to science. This aside, it is Magueijo’s unsanitized portrayal of science that will surprise and entertain his readers.

Jacquard’s Web

by James Essinger, Oxford University Press. Hardback ISBN 0192805770, £14.99.

When invited to review Jacquard’s Web, I admit that I had to google (v.t., Macmillan English Dictionary) James Essinger. I discovered, with some misgivings, that he has published more than 25 management books with titles such as The Investment Manager’s Handbook and Virtual Financial Services. However, I also found a claim that he is good at making technical issues accessible, and indeed he is. Better still, Essinger turns out to be an accomplished storyteller.

Jacquard’s Web is an intricate tale of inventors and inventions, starting almost three centuries ago among the silk-weavers of Lyons, France, and ending today, or rather tomorrow, among computer users worldwide. Well researched, the narrative traces a chain of links between Jacquard’s silk-weaving loom and modern computers. Most of the techniques involved are adequately explained, even if occasionally with fuzzy accuracy (a pixel, whether on a screen or in woven cloth, has more than two possible states), but Essinger presents this particular technological evolution from a socio-economical standpoint, and here his familiarity with the business world and its denizens clearly adds value.

The story tells of the achievements and frustrations of a motley collection of characters, who between them took the punched card about as far as it could go. We find out about Joseph-Marie Jacquard, son of a Lyons master weaver, who cunningly avoided execution as a counter-revolutionary and went on to benefit from Napoleon’s imperial boost to science and technology; Charles Babbage, a Victorian gentleman of private means, who outlived the largesse of a government that funded his developments of some of the most complicated unbuilt machines ever imagined; Ada, Countess of Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron and steadfast believer in Babbage, a scientifically minded lady born long before her time; Herman Hollerith, a mechanical engineer more at ease with cogs than commerce, who nonetheless became successful and wealthy thanks to his exploitation of Jacquard’s concepts; and finally Thomas Watson, businessman par excellence, patron saint of salesmen and father of IBM.

The automated loom technology patented by Jacquard in 1804 was born of a need to increase production of the exquisite silk fabrics so coveted by France’s aristocracy, and to create whatever pattern the customer desired – roses today, lilies tomorrow. The breakthrough came with the use of punched cards to store instructions for controlling the “pick” – the number and position of warp threads to be lifted for each row woven. The result was an astonishing 24-fold increase over the inch of cloth per day that a weaver and draw-boy could produce.

Thereafter, the humble punched card was pivotal to most of the inventions described, controlling the cogwheels of Babbage’s would-be Analytical Engine, storing data for Hollerith’s automatic information processing of US and Russian census returns, and governing the operation of tabulators, comptometers and early computers. Indeed, IBM’s very last punched card was produced as late as 1984.

Instead of Jacquard’s Web, this book could aptly have been titled Pieces of Cardboard that Changed the World. As well as looms and computers, the author recalls the notorious “hanging chads” of Florida, those parts of the stiff cards that didn’t always fall away from holes punched by voters in the 2000 presidential election.

With the advent of electronics, magnetic tapes and disks, Essinger has increasing difficulty arguing for one-to-one associations between looms and modern computers; Tim Berners-Lee might take umbrage, were that his nature, at the suggestion that “it is not stretching credibility too far to describe the internet itself [sic] as Jacquard’s Web”.
The final chapter, speculating on the future, is rather untidy, unnecessary and much weaker than the others. But never mind – the others are all good, packed with facts and anecdotes, agreeably illustrated, highly informative and subtly amusing.

Lab rolls out the red carpet for prestigious official ceremony

Heads of state, representatives from many countries, and scientists and engineers from CERN’s past, present and future research in particle physics attended the laboratory’s official 50th anniversary ceremony on 19 October. The speakers praised the organization for its advancement of science and for fostering international collaboration, both among scientists and between countries, across Europe and beyond.

CCElab1_12-04 — In honour of 50 years of CERN, more than 800 invitees, including 28 delegations of member and observer states, attended the official anniversary ceremony in October.

Juan Carlos, the King of Spain, Jacques Chirac, President of the Republic of France, and Joseph Deiss, President of the Swiss Confederation, were joined by delegations from member and observer states. Before the ceremony, Jacques Chirac visited the construction site for the CMS experiment in Cessy, France, and later he joined Joseph Deiss and Juan Carlos on a tour of the ATLAS cavern. Juan Carlos also took the time to meet many of CERN’s Spanish scientists.

CCElab2_12-04 — François de Rose at the anniversary ceremony – one of CERN’s founding fathers.

Immediately before the ceremony, the heads of state and the delegations gathered in the recently erected Globe of Science and Innovation. This large, spherical building made entirely of wood was donated by the Swiss Confederation in honour of the 50th anniversary. In the Globe, which is as big as the dome of St Peter’s Cathedral at the Vatican, a multimedia presentation tailored to each country played while the representatives entered and signed the gilded visitor’s book.

CCElab3_12-04 — Left to right: Jacques Chirac, President of France; Joseph Deiss, President of the Swiss Confederation; Juan Carlos, King of Spain.

Robert Aymar, director-general of CERN, began the series of speeches at the event. François de Rose, the sole surviving founder of the organization, gave a first-hand account of how CERN arose from the ashes of the Second World War. Also speaking were Federico Mayor, former director of UNESCO; Maria van der Hoeven, minister of education, culture and science of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (speaking on behalf of the president of the European Council, who was recovering from a severe illness); Robert Cramer, president of the Geneva State Council; and the heads of state, Joseph Deiss, Jacques Chirac and Juan Carlos. Enzo Iarocci, president of the CERN Council, closed the ceremony.

A common theme in the speeches was how CERN should continue to serve as a model of scientific rigour and international co-operation. Speakers pointed to how scientists at CERN have deepened our knowledge of nature, while also creating technologies of practical importance, such as new types of medical imaging equipment and the World Wide Web.

CERN’s 50th anniversary open day attracts record number of visitors

When CERN opened its doors to the public for its open day on 16 October, the laboratory took on the air of a county fair. Children took rides around the site in a big lorry, visitors ate ice cream that had been handmade in a flash using liquid nitrogen, and crowds strolled the lanes as they visited more than 50 events across various sites in Switzerland and France.

CCEann1_12-04 — The normal main entrance was crowded with visitors from 8.30 a.m. onwards.

An estimated 32,000 visitors, from across Europe and beyond, flocked to the laboratory for a day of tours, displays and presentations. The majority of events were in experiment halls and workshops that are normally closed to the public. The last open day was in 1998, and this one attracted so many people that visitors had to wait in long lines at the main events.

CCEann2_12-04 — Orange jackets made the demonstrators and guides easy to find during the open day.

Some of the biggest attractions were the huge detectors under construction for the Large Hadron Collider. Such tours helped the visitors gain a sense of the scale of CERN’s work – and even those who already had some notion of CERN were awed by the gigantic detectors, caverns, and tunnels.

CCEann3_12-04 — Posing for a photograph in the ATLAS cavern was a popular choice with visitors.

Some of the attractions gave visitors a more direct feel for the science and technology behind research at CERN. In one hall, volunteers revealed the strange properties of matter at low temperatures with a miniature train levitated by a superconducting magnet, and demonstrated superfluidity in liquid helium. At the GridCafé, visitors could surf the Web and learn about the networks of computer centres that CERN is helping to organize. At another site, visitors gained hands-on experience assembling their own working cosmic-ray detectors.

Particle physics in 2054

In a letter to the European Cultural Conference in Lausanne, Switzerland, in December 1949, Louis de Broglie advocated “the creation of a laboratory or institution where it would be possible to do scientific work, but somehow beyond the framework of the different participating states”. Endowed with more resources than national facilities, such a laboratory could “undertake tasks, which, by virtue of their size and cost, were beyond the scope of individual countries”.

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, came into being five years later in 1954. Today, 50 years after its foundation, it is reassuring to see that CERN is building the largest and most powerful particle accelerator ever: the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This 14 TeV proton-proton collider is at the cutting edge of technology, and is a heartening sign of both the public’s support for basic science in Europe and beyond, and of the determination of European countries to stay at the forefront of particle physics.
I have been asked to imagine what the next 50 years might hold for CERN and for particle physics. I shall take this opportunity to look into a very cloudy crystal ball, with the deep conviction that particle physics will continue to enrich culture and produce knowledge and technology as it has done for a large part of the last century.

In the medium term, CERN’s activities will be dominated by the LHC. By modifying the magnetic fields of the collider around the proton-interaction points, we can envisage a luminosity upgrade that would prolong the working life of the accelerator and extend the mass range for discovery. At a much higher cost we can even imagine doubling the collision energy by replacing the present LHC dipoles with higher-field magnets. Indeed, fully exploiting the LHC could easily take us to 2020 or 2025. As a result, there is little chance of CERN being involved in the construction of a 0.5-1 TeV linear electron-positron collider.

But what can we say about the more distant future of CERN, say from 2020 onwards, once the results from the LHC and, possibly, the linear collider are known? A linear collider with a length of several tens of kilometres could conceivably be built underground alongside the Jura mountains next to CERN. On the other hand, a big circular tunnel, such as that required by a Very Large Hadron Collider, would have to go below Lake Geneva or below the Jura (or both). Either option would be simply too expensive to consider. This is why a 3-5 TeV Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) would be the project of choice for the CERN site. A CLIC project could be launched in about 2015, when the LHC will be operating smoothly at its design luminosity, and data-taking could begin as soon as the early 2020s.

CLIC or a VLHC are enormous projects that will have to be undertaken through worldwide collaboration. But does this mean we should make a further step along the lines advocated 50 years ago by de Broglie and promote a world laboratory? This issue has been widely discussed, but in my view concentrating high-energy particle physics in a single laboratory with worldwide support is not a good idea. It would be too vulnerable to fluctuations in policy and mistakes in management. Moreover, it would not stimulate competition. My preference would be a coordinated global network that includes universities, national laboratories and regional laboratories like CERN and Fermilab.

The International Committee for Future Accelerators has considered the concept of a global accelerator network, although there is no consensus on what such a network might actually be or what it could do for us. As I see it, a global network would essentially be a new way of organizing existing particle-physics centres across the world, and focusing them on projects with a global dimension. For example, it would perform “diffuse” R&D on accelerators and detectors, co-operating on a single project at any one time and providing components for the machines and detectors.

Multinational companies are supposed to do what national companies cannot. Similarly, a global accelerator network only makes sense if it can achieve something that individual regions cannot do by themselves and, moreover, something that is essential to make real progress in particle physics. CLIC at CERN and the VLHC at Fermilab could be among the long-term goals of the global accelerator network, which would keep the world’s particle physicists busy until 2050. The transition to such a new organization would probably be similar to the shift in Europe from national laboratories to CERN – it would be difficult but worth trying.

Whatever the next 50 years hold for CERN and particle physics in general, it will almost certainly require countries to pool their resources and work together closely. Some 54 years since de Broglie’s letter inspired European scientists to build a single laboratory, his vision of basic science is still as relevant: “The universal and very often disinterested nature of scientific research seems to have predestined it for reciprocal and fruitful collaboration.”

• Extracted with permission from “CERN: the next 50 years” in Physics World September 2004 p42.

Path Integrals in Quantum Mechanics, Statistics, Polymer Physics, and Financial Markets

by Hagen Kleinert, World Scientific. Hardback ISBN 9812381066, £84 ($138). Paperback ISBN 9812381074, £29 ($48).

This third edition is a significantly expanded version of the original textbook published in 1990. It includes, for the first time, explicit solutions of nontrivial quantum-mechanical systems, in particular the hydrogen atom.

The Future of Theoretical Physics and Cosmology: Celebrating Stephen Hawking’s 60th Birthday

by G W Gibbons, E P S Shellard and S J Rankin (eds), Cambridge University Press. Hardback ISBN 0521820812, £40 ($60).

Stephen Hawking’s 60th birthday was celebrated in Cambridge, UK, with a meeting attended by many well-known theoretical physicists. This volume is based on lectures given at the meeting. It begins with talks by Martin Rees, James Hartle, Roger Penrose, Kip Thorne and Hawking himself given at a public symposium that formed part of the conference. Subsequent chapters cover advanced presentations on space-time singularities, black holes, Hawking radiation, quantum gravity, M-theory, cosmology and quantum cosmology.

A Personal History of CESR and CLEO

by Karl Berkelman, World Scientific. Hardback ISBN 9812386971, $52 (£38).

CCEboo1_11-04 — A Personal History of CESR and CLEO</b> by Karl Berkelman.

This slim volume relates in chronological order the main events in the story of the particle-physics laboratory at Cornell, from its foundation in the days when any major university would have the ambition and generally the means to found and run its own particle accelerator, to the present day, in which Cornell has the only front-rank accelerator not based in a national or international laboratory. The story of how Cornell survived and prospered as similar laboratories foundered is a fascinating one.

The Laboratory of Nuclear Studies was founded as faculty members of Cornell University, New York, returned from duties on the Manhattan Project in 1946. Shortly thereafter, the first director, Robert Bacher, left for the Atomic Energy Commission and Bob Wilson was hired from Harvard to replace him. The Cornell ethos that underpins the remarkable success of the laboratory emanates in large part from Wilson’s “can do” mentality and determination to cut out all frills and many corners in order to get the biggest “bang for the buck” spent on an accelerator. The faculty pitched in enthusiastically and became experts in a wide variety of techniques in both accelerator physics and analysis. After Wilson left to found Fermilab, “Mac” McDaniel continued his tradition of inspiring leadership, although with a very different style.

Berkelman himself took over in 1985, bringing his own style of modest, calm but inspirational leadership to the still-juvenile CESR machine and detectors. The book is the story not only of some remarkable accelerators, but also of a remarkable experiment, CLEO, as well as its sister experiment for many years, CUSB. Perpetually renewing itself as it passed from CLEO-I through various integers and half-integers to CLEO-III, the collaboration grew but always retained the very democratic outlook that Berkelman considers the secret of its success. This success is impressive indeed; in 2001, over half the entries in the PDG tables for B mesons and charmed mesons and baryons were established by results from CESR.

The success of a lab depends greatly on the personality of charismatic leaders, and in many ways this book is the story of three of them: Wilson, McDaniel and Maury Tigner. Tigner rides to the rescue at several moments of crisis in his predecessors’ reigns with a typically inspired technical solution or idea, and it is in his capable hands that the future of the laboratory now lies. Naturally, the book downplays the influence of Berkelman himself, which was large, but it makes clear the other important factor in Cornell’s success – the strength in depth in the faculty and the dedication of all the staff. Perhaps another visible thread throughout the narrative is the long-standing rivalry between SLAC and Cornell, always simmering below the surface and occasionally erupting in open contests such as the competition with the PEP machine and the discussions on the site for a US B-factory. Berkelman is illuminating on some of the factors he believes played a part in these decisions and the role of the National Science Foundation in steadfastly supporting the laboratory while perforce leaving it substantially free to run its own affairs.
Berkelman has a straightforward and clear style, and there are several interesting and enlightening illustrations. However, despite the claim in the preface that he tried “to broaden its accessibility to a wider audience” than particle physicists, it is difficult to believe that any such readers will be able to make much progress through the host of technicalities in both machine physics and particle physics that are inevitable in a book of this kind, and which indeed give it much of its value. On the other hand, physicists who either know and/or love the Cornell that is the real hero of this book, or who wish to discover the reasons behind its remarkable and in many ways unique success, will find much food for thought in this interesting and valuable exposition.

Topics

Reset your password

Registration complete