دانلود کتاب گریزان – چگونه پیتر هیگز معمای جرم را حل کرد

TO MANY, THE Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva is synonymous with Peter Higgs, the physicist after whom the particle accelerator’s primary target—the Higgs boson—is named. But what is the Higgs boson, and why is it so singular to have been dubbed in media headlines the God Particle? And not least, who is Higgs? This breakthrough goes back to 1964 when the thirty-five-year-old physicist seeded a theory about the nature of matter and the fundamental forces of nature that had remarkable consequences. This theory assumes that even if space were to be emptied completely of matter and all known sources of energy, it would still be filled by a ghostlike field that cannot be shut down. Immersed in this essence forever, we have nonetheless been unaware of it. The concept of an elusive elixir is so revolutionary, and so removed from our normal senses, that it took half a century to prove it, leading to Higgs’ Nobel Prize in 2013. I have known Peter Higgs for many years, as a colleague in the scientific community and as a friend. After publication in 2011 of my history of particle physics in the late twentieth century, The Infinity Puzzle, Higgs agreed to join me in conversations at several science and literary festivals to help explain the universe and promote public understanding of his work. Elusive draws on those and other discussions, supplemented by a series of lengthy weekly phone conversations held during the COVID-19 lockdown, by letters, and by interviews of other leading actors in the decades-long quest for the Higgs boson. Memories of events that happened in the distant past are easily conflated, and wherever possible I have cross-checked the recollections of Higgs and other interviewees with documentary records, failing which, with one another’s knowledge of the events. If anyone has archived information that would lead to corrections, please let me know.