Chapter 9: Inner Space, Outer Space and the Time Before Time

“Science is nothing more than the search to discover unity in the wild variety of nature- or more exactly, in the variety of our experiences.” 
-Leon Lederman

The Big Bang Theory has been given a lot of flack in the media but in the scienctific community has a strong foothold, and a majority acceptance. This is because there is a lot of evidence supporting it, from observations made by Edwin Hubble in 1929 when he compared spectral lines of light from all over the sky, he noticed that they were all moving away from him, in every direction. Other evidence is in the form of reminiscent radiation that can still be detected. Also the universe has a very constant temperature, that is, distant parts are within fractions of a degree of each other, this means that they at one time had the same amount of energy and were incredibly close to each other.

GUTs is a collection of theories called the Grand Unification Theories, which attempt to unify both quantum chromodynamics (the variation found within quarks and leptons often refered to as their flavor or color) and the electroweak force. This window of unification is in the energy window of 10^15 GeV. The symmetry of the laws of nature are at a higher level. At this temperature there is only one particle and one force but an large amount of force carrying particle and gravity. There are many many variations on this theory, not particularly strong, but cannot be experimentally disproven so are still floating around the scientific community.

Another theory is SUSY, which stands for supersummetry. This theory unifies particles and force carriers. Everything has a supersymetrical partner but so far we haven’t seen them because they are super high energy and our particle accelerators cannot get their just yet. Susy theory would lead to a true quantum theory with no more holes!! First, those theoretical physicists just need to fix the holes.

Open vs. Closed Universe

An open universe is one that is continuously expand, growing colder, forever, this is caused by very little gravitational mass. An closed universe is where there is too much gravitational mass and the current expansion will reverse, resulting in a Big Crunch. In order to calculate the gravitational mass, you can count the stars, which has been done and says that it is an Open universe. But now it is thought that there is another type of matter, called Dark Matter, that adds mass to the universe. Lucky for us, theoretical physicists believe that the total mass puts our universe in a great position, a Flat Universe, which has enough mass to not expand too big, but not too much that it will “crunch”. We are essentially expanding, at a slowly decreasing rate. 

Chapter 8: The God Particle

 “Little Neutrino of the World

With the speed of light you’re hurled.

No charge, no mass no space dimension?

Shame! You do defy convention.”

-         Leon Lederman, pg 344

 

This is one of the many anecdotes that are sprinkled into this chapter about what is known about the Higgs (The God Particle). Unification is an ongoing theme in this book, and according to the science history summarized by Lederman, a very popular goal in scientific fields for the last couple thousand years. The God Particle would indeed give every thing that simplistic, basic common element. But why do physicists think it even exists? The problem in the going theory at the moment (QED) is that when energies get really high, t stops working, the probabilities of certain particles being created during collisions exceed 100 % which is impossible. These screwy numbers show that there is something missing, that would be affecting every particle and force that when taken into account would correct the current shortcomings and errors. One of the problems with Quantum theory is gravity. No one has been able to get gravity to conform to the theory, so far scientists are not quite sure where or how it fits in.

The God Particle is also called interchangeably the Higgs Particle and the Higgs field, and so far physicists have pinned down what it does is it is responsible for mass. Yes that’s right, mass is not an arbitrary constant of a certain particle, like its spin or charge. Instead the Higgs field permeates everything, even the vacuum, influencing every particles interaction. The Higgs particle has essentially changed what I considered something that was constant. Mass is a property dependent on the particles interactions with other particles and its environment. The Higgs also has no direction, is a scalar quantity, this is why it still has an effect in “the void”. Another piece of the puzzle that is complicating the process of pinning down this particle is that the Higgs is destroyed by high energy. This means that during the Big Bang it wasn’t how it is now, but after a little bit of time and cooling, the Higgs kicked into gear and proliferated. The quest for the God Particle has changed physics and Lederman sums this up “before Higgs, symmetry and boredom, after Higgs, complexity and boredom.” (page 347).

The more energy that a given particle has, the faster it decays, this is because it has more options to decay into, that is more particles have less mass then them so in certain conditions they can decay into any of them. This prompt a change in the attitude towards accelerators in the late 80’s, they became particle factories, doing as many collisions as possible to create as many of these different “options”. The goal was to have a large number of each type of product to study, and make any correlations between certain particles and forces playing roles at certain energy levels etc… The reason why not all of the resources were poured into one collider to find the elusive God Particle is because at the time of the Big Bang, all of the various elementary particles were all of equal amount and of very high energy, so by seeing what the ratio of particles are now and their energies, it can give us very useful information about the cooling process the universe is going through.

Interlude B: The Dancing Moo-Shu Masters

This interlude is a rant on something that greatly bothers Leon Lederman. The issue that is causing all the anger is pseudoscience books that are written connecting Physics principles and western mysticism. The issue does not lie with religion, it is in the fact that these authors start with credible science then branch into something that is not correct. The way the evidence is used is usually wrong or just so out there that there actually is no connection. One particularly popular topic for these “science writers” is Quantum Theory. Because it is hard to understand, and as the auther puts it “spooky” these people make the argument why not believe other strange stuff? The fact that these book are placed in the science section of bookstores makes the general public believe that what these books say are correct, which mislead and misinform the public. Ledermans sarcastic tone and his passionate view are summed up in this line, “Tao and Wu Li (examples of these types of books) constitute a relatively respectable middle ground between good science books and a lunatic fringe of fakes, charlatans, and crazies…”

He spends the second half of the interlude defending the process used in the scientific community of how new theories come to be accepted. Proof, proof and more proof!! Physics is not a religion (unlike some of these books portray it as) because there is no blind belief. When a new scientist explains something that was previously unexplained, they build off of old theories, unless it proves those theories incomplete or incorrect. Science is not about sticking to rules no matter what, it is about revolution and change. He ends this brief interlude on a lighter note, “Physics is not religion, if it were, we would have a much easier time raising money.”

Chapter 7: A-tom!

This is quite a large chapter, it goes through in a lot of detail, the Standard Model, which outlines all elementary particles that make up EVERYTHING and the forces that are at work amongst them. The major theory behind this is Quantum Electrodynamics.

The best way to organize the information in this chapter in a chart:

MATTER
Quarks àare found within things like protons(made up of uud combo) , and the properties that we have attributed to those larger particles is actually a result of the sum of what the quarks are doing inside them.
u à up	charge +2/3
d à down	charge -2/3
c à charm	high mass, but long lifetime
s à strange	charge -2/3
b à bottom	last one discovered, pairs with theoretical top quark
t ? à top	hypothesized, but not found yet
Leptons
Ve à electron neutrino	no charge, almost no mass, this one is associated in reactions with electrons
e à electron	a lot of charge in a very small mass, according to calculations it should be infinitely heavy, but its not
Vµ àmuon neutrino	no charge and almost no mass, discovered and named by Fermi. This variaton of nutrino is associated with muon reactons
µ à muon	cousin of electron, but much heavier, which changes its radius and energy level.
Vτ à	never been pinned down experimentally, only theoretically, but its existance is widely accepted
τ	cousin of electron, but much heavier
Forces (messenger particles)
electromagnetism	forces associated with -ve or +ve charge, and magnets, effects can be observed in everyday life
weak force	between quarks, responsible for radioactivity and nuclear decay.
Strong force	the force that hold the nucleus together, in the form of the particles called Gluons. A lot of properties of compound atoms are the result of the strong force “leaking out” of the nucleus.

Parity Violation is the reason that we are here today. If the theory of parity held true, after the Big Bang there would have been an equel amount of matter and antimatter, which would have canceled each other out, leaving too low an energy level for anything to happen. Luckily, there was a bit more matter than antimatter, so when things started annihilating, there was enough matter (and energy) for everything as we know it to form.

An interesting rule that I came across in this chapter is the Totalitarian Rule of Physics “Anything that isn’t forbidden is compulsory.” This means that if something cannot be completely ruled out it has to be happening. With these elementary particles, and the forces acting on them, whether or not a specific action is occurring is a yes/no answer, no grey area.

Quarks are peculiar because the closer they are to each other, the weaker the forces between them are (that is the weak force). So if quarks are separated, the larger the distance, the more energy needed to over come the Weak force. This means that there an be no such thing as a free Quark, they are always with other particles with forces acting on them. The also have “asymptotic freedom” which means that they will get closer and closer but never actually touch. This is counter intuitive and opposite to electromagnetism which most people are more familiar with. 

Chapter 6: Accelerators

This entire chapter is dedicated to explaining how an accelerator works, specifically the cascade accelerator at Fermilab. It is composed f five sequential machines, each a step up in level of complication and energy. What they put into the accelerator is protons, and they get these protons from Hydrogen gas. (They spend around $20 a year on the actual particles they accelerate) The first ring in the accelerator is called the Cockcroft-Walton electrostatic accelerator. In there, a spark tears the electron off of the Hydrogen atom, leaving only a single proton (the nucleus).

Number of electron volts		abbreviation
	Thousand electron volts	KeV
	Million electron volts	MeV
	Billion electron volts	GeV
	Trillion electron volts	TeV

Then the protons are accelerated, to 750KeV beam wich is aimed (by magnets) at the next step, which is a linac. A linac is a linear accelerator that sends these protons down a long series of radio-frequency gaps to bring them up to 200 MeV. Every time an electron crosses a gap with certain battery like and magnetic properties, its energy is increased. Next these protons are sent to a synchrotron, where their energy is again, boosted. This results in a stream of protons with 8 GeV. Now these particles going really really fast are steered into the main ring (by very very strong magnets) the Tevitron. This was the original work horse of the lab, bringing protons up to 150 GeV. Then they go to the Superconducting Tevitron ring which is the same size as the last ring (4 miles, perfect circle) and just a few feet bellow. This is the limit, bringing the energy to 900 GeV, then it is steered into the tunnel where the beam is divided into 14 lines and the lab team either provides targets to hit or antimatter to hit.

These two types of reactions serve different purposes. But the main difference is the amount of energy available for the resultant. When a particle hits a stationary object, the total energy in the system is what the moving particle brought there, but when you smash together 2 particles moving in opposite directions you have twice the energy available for the collision. The more energy the better because often times new particles are the result of these collisions, and the higher the energy, the more elementary the particles that fly off become.

Chapter 5: The Naked Atom

This chapter has a much lighter tone to it compared to the previous ones. You can tell by the number of jokes, anecdotes and general giddiness on the part of Leon Lederman’s commentary. This change in attitude must be because of the topic covered, as hinted by the chapters title, Lederman goes through how scientists discovered the various subatomic particles, with particular emphasis on the electron. Knowing the authors background in chemistry its no surprise that he likes this stuff so much. A good deal of this chapter was dedicated to explaining the development on Quantum Theory and how it pertains to various particles from the micro to the macro. In turns out that the story of what happens inside the atom (not a-tom) is quite complex, and caused a lot of heated debates between some of the scientific communities brightest stars.

Some of the interesting things in this chapter (other then the nitty gritty Quantum mechanical model of course) is the personal relationships and background on these very famous physicists. For instance, Ernest Rutherford was a burly, 6 foot 4 inches tall New Zealander who had a knack for using small delicate lab equipment, that’s why J.J. Thomson hired him to work at Cambridge for him. Rutherford was known to swear…a lot , and especially at experiments, but this method seemed to work because he had the experimental results to back it up. After some years there, Rutherford crossed the pond to McGill University where he made a name for himself not only for his work with radioactivity that won him the nobel prize but also for saying things that would get him in trouble, like “All science is either physics or stamp collecting”. By the time Rutherford conducted his famous gold foil experiment, where he has lab assistants he was head of the Cambridge Lab. When the alpha particles were shot at the gold foil, and some actually bounced back he was astounded and was quoted as saying “It was as if you shot a 15-inch artillery shell at a piece of tissue paper and it bounced back at you”. He used this evidence to support the idea of a dense, positive nucleus found in the center of atoms.

Usually when students in high school are taught about what a chemical atom looks like, the model teachers’ use is called the Bohr- Rutherford Model. This would make it seem that Neils Bohr and Rutherford were scientific peers who worked together and were friends. They most certainly were not. Neils Bohr was a young and inspired by Rutherford’s new model of the atom, but he was not satisfied with how electrons were represented so we went to work to disprove parts of Rutherford’s model and fit in his own ideas. You can imagine that a senior phycisit with a Nobel Prize no less didn’t take kindly to a young outspoken physicist who was barely a postdoc. Luckily Bohr was right. His idea was Quantum energy levels that electrons sit in surrounding Rutherfords Nucleus. When an electron gains energy, it can jump up to another energy level, and when it looses energy it call fall back down to its ground state. The amount of energy required was a certain amount, and only a certain number of electrons could fit in each energy level.

Of course other very important physicists refined this model, adding to Quantum Theory, like Heisenburg’s theory of matrix mechanics which used spectral lines to define the radii of the orbits.

Erwin Schrodinger is another colorful physicist. He is credited with having the largest burst of theoretical creativity for someone over the age of 30 (old for new ideas from physicists). He created an equation known as the wave function that gave the radii of Bohr’s energy levels without any fudging. He called it the theory of Wave Mechanics and it was a sensations. What is so unique about Schrodinger? He created this entire theory in a few weeks, while on vacation in the Swiss Alps with his mistress. He said he just needed some new inspiration. His equation is easy to use, and it gives the probability of finding an electron at a specific point. This ease of use and useful and accurate information made it incredibly popular. Schrödinger hated this interpretation (of it being a probability equation) and ended up regretting creating it.

Scientists like to be right, and like to prove their peers wrong. This can create some rivalry, and one that is very famous was between Neils Bohr and Albert Einstein. They spent a good chunk of their  carreers finding the flaws in each others ideas. Einstien would create a thought experiment (hypothetical situation) and Bohr would find a flaw, then Einstein would counter and so on and so forth. Most of their disagreements centered around weather or not Quantum Theory was complete.

All of the work, the equations and theories can be applied to the Big Bang, and are what researchers (like Leon Lederman at Fermi Lab) are using to find the God particle. At the end of this chapter, Lederman states that he would rather stick to his particle accelerator then get involved in the raging debate around Quantum Theory, but he is glad other scientists are sticking with it.

Chapter 4: Still Looking For the Atom: Chemist and Electricians

This is an information dense chapter that goes through about 300 years of electrochemical history. It turns out that a lot happened between 1600 and 1900. These chemists did experiments when physicist at the time were stuck in a theoretical realm. The discoveries and intellectual leaps that these chemists made were incredibly important in advancing all fields of science. Now lets get to some of the major scientists:

Evangelista Torricelli (1608 – 1648) : he discovered air pressure, by inventing the first barometer. Through various experiments he also created the first vacuum, and proved the idea of “a void” to the scientific community.

Robert Boyle (1627- 1692): The author refers to him as “the father of chemistry”  He obviously came up with Boyles Law which says that the volume of the gas varied inversely with the pressure on it.

Antoine – Laurent Lavoisier (1743 – 1794): created the metric system which is used around the world in scientific inquiry. He was a fierce advocate of experiment procedure, he demanded accuracy. He was sent to the guillotine during the French Revolution at the age of 50, apparently the people who were in charge did not like how outspoken he was.

John Dalton (1766 – 1844): A hermit like man, who was barely recognized by his peers until he revealed his atomic theory of matter. What set his work apart was that the weight of the particles played a crucial role. Although he was wrong in  saying that the chemical atom (hydrogen, carbon, oxygen etc.. ) was the smallest particle, he established the reality of atoms, and because each of his atoms had a different weight, he inspired others to explore why this is.

Dmitri Mendeleev (1834 -1907): Siberian born odd ball, he lived off of a diet of sour milk, which was a medical fad of the time. He is responsible for the periodic table of elements. He put all of the known elements on playing cards, with their mass and other known info, and played with their order until he noticed certain periodical trends, when there wasn’t a known element to follow the patterns, he left a blank, and as time passed these blanks filled into what became the modern periodic table of the elements.

Between the years of 1820 – 18 70 there was a huge explosion of popularity surrounding electricity, and within that short time frame, many physicists including Coulomb,  Micheal Faraday, Hertz and James Clerk Maxwell conducted countless experiments that led to a unified theory and understanding of electricity, magnetism and light.

In 1898 J.J. Thomson unveiled years of work he conducted with cathode ray tubes that shattered the widely held belief that chemical atoms were the smallest unit of matter and were indivisible by “discovering” electrons. By proving that there were smaller particle, Thomson re-sparked the interest in particle physics.

This chapter is really interesting because it goes through the history of other fields of science and essentially gives the important points, while highlighting the relationships between various branches of science. It also went over the hardships that early chemists and the like had to face, a lack of knowledge, funds and equipment topping that list, it shows that these people had to be incredible intelligent and resourceful in order to make the types of intellectual leaps that they did. This brief history gives some background to what’s coming up in the book, which helps the reader to appreciate the gravity of the subject.