Beech The Large Hadron Collider

Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe
1. Auflage 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4419-5668-2
Verlag: Springer
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 218 Seiten

It may at first seem that the world of subatomic physics is far removed from our every day lives. Isn't it all just a waste of time and taxpayers' money? Hopefully, all who read this book will come to a different conclusion. Collider physics is all about our origins, and this aspect alone makes it worthy of our very best attention. The experiments conducted within the vast collider chambers are at the forefront of humanity's quest to unweave the great tapestry that is the universe. Everything is connected. Within the macrocosm is the microcosm. By knowing how matter is structured, how atoms and elementary particles interact, and what forces control the interactions between the particles, we discover further clues as to why the universe is the way it is, and we uncover glimpses of how everything came into being. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), in the process of coming online at CERN, is the world's largest and most complex machine. It represents the pinnacle of human ingenuity, and its physical characteristics, costs, and workings astound us at every turn. We are literally humbled by the machine that has been produced through a grand international collaboration of scientists. This book is about what those scientists hope to discover with the LHC, for hopes do run high, and there is much at stake. Careers, reputations and prestigious science prizes will be realized, and possibly lost, in the wake of the results that the LHC will produce. And there are risks, real and imagined. The LHC will probe the very fabric of matter and it will help us understand the very weft and the weave of the universe.

Dr. Martin Beech is a full professor of astronomy at Campion College at The University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada. He has published many scientific research papers on stellar structure and evolution and several books on astronomy. Asteroid 12343 has been named in recognition of his research on meteors and meteorites. This is Beech's third book for Springer. He has already published Rejuvenating the Sun and Avoiding Other Global Catastrophes (2008) and Terraforming: The Creating of Habitable Worlds (2009).

Autoren/Hrsg.

Beech, Martin

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1;Preface;6
2;Contents;9
3;About the Author;12
4;1 The Story of Matter;13
4.1; A Few Searching Questions;13
4.2; The Smallest of Things;17
4.3; Mysterium Cosmographicum;21
4.4; A Particle Primer;23
4.4.1; Thomson's Plum Pudding and an Unexpected Rebound;24
4.4.2; The Quantum World and the Bohr Atom;27
4.5; The New Quantum Mechanics;33
4.5.1; Exclusion;35
4.5.2; Fermi's Little Neutron;36
4.6; Three Quarks for Muster Mark;41
4.7; Building the Universe;43
4.7.1; The Matter Alphabet;43
4.7.2; We Are of the Stars;44
4.8; The Hubble Deep Field;50
4.9; Moving Forwards;52
5;2 The Worlds Most Complicated Machine;53
5.1; The End of the Beginning;54
5.2; Disappointment and Setback;58
5.3; Court Case Number 1:2008cv00136;60
5.4; Afterwards;62
5.5; Overview: A Protons Journey;63
5.6; The Journey to the LHC;68
5.7; Collider Basics;69
5.8; The Detectors;74
6;3 The Standard Model, the Higgs, and Beyond;83
6.1; Generation the First An Acrostic;83
6.2; Feeling the Force;86
6.3; The Higgs Field Achieving Mass;90
6.4; Feynman Diagrams;91
6.5; Searching for the Higgs;94
6.6; Supersymmetry;98
6.7; Exotica: Going Up, Going Down;100
7;4 The Big Bang and the First 380,000 Years;103
7.1; The Big Bang;107
7.2; The Critical Density and ;110
7.3; The Microwave Background;111
7.4; Primordial Nucleosynthesis;115
7.5; Inflation, Flatness, Horizons, and a Free Lunch;117
7.6; The QuarkGluon Plasma;122
7.7; ALICE: In Experimental Wonderland;125
7.8; Matter/Antimatter: It Matters;127
7.9; Getting to the Bottom of Things;129
8;5 Dark Matters;132
8.1; Interstellar Matters;133
8.2; Where Are We;137
8.3; Unraveling the Nebula Mystery;139
8.4; The Galaxy Zoo;141
8.5; The Local Group;143
8.6; Galaxy Clusters;144
8.7; Wheres the Missing Mass;146
8.8; All in a Spin: Dark Matter Found;148
8.9; Gravitational Lenses and Anamorphic Galaxies;153
8.10; Some Dark Matter Candidates;158
8.10.1; The Neutralino;158
8.10.2; Looking for MACHOs;160
8.10.3; DAMA Finds WIMPS, Maybe;160
8.10.4; CDMS Sees Two, Well, Maybe;162
8.10.5; Bubbles at COUPP;162
8.10.6; CHAMPs and SIMPs;164
8.10.7; PAMELA Finds an Excess;166
8.10.8; Fermi's Needle in a Haystack;167
8.11; ADMX;168
8.12; Euclids Dark Map;168
8.13; The MOND Alternative;170
8.14; Dark Stars and Y(4140);171
9;6 Dark Energy and an Accelerating Universe;174
9.1; The Measure of the Stars;176
9.2; An Expanding Universe;178
9.3; Death Throes and Distance;180
9.4; Future Sun Take One;181
9.5; The Degenerate World of White Dwarfs;183
9.6; Future Sun Take Two;186
9.7; The Case of IK Pegasus B;188
9.8; High-Z Supernova Surveys;190
9.9; Dark Energy and CDM Cosmology;191
9.10; A Distant Darkness;195
9.11; Testing Copernicus;197
10;7 The Waiting Game;199
10.1; Hoping for the Unexpected;199
10.2; Massive Star Evolution;200
10.3; The Strange Case of RXJ1856.5-3754 and Pulsar 3C58;208
10.4; Small, Dark, and Many Dimensioned;213
10.5; This Magnet Has Only One Pole;221
10.6; These Rays Are Truly Cosmic;224
10.7; Looking Forward to LHCf;228
10.8; The King Is Dead Long Live the King;229
11;Appendix A Units and Constants;233
12;Appendix B Acronym List;235
13;Appendix C Glossary of Technical Terms;238
14;Index;242