Who cares about particle physics
Making sense of the Higgs boson, the Large Hadron Collider and CERN
Here is a book written in clear and simple terms for all people curious about particle physics and willing to discover a whole world spanning from the infinitesimally small up to the infinitely large.
This book explains not only what are particle physics and the current ongoing research at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, but also how fundamental research is done by large international collaborations of scientists and how it contributes to improving our lives.
What are the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and its huge detectors used for and how do they work? The creativity, diversity and motivation of thousand scientists are key elements to the success of one of the largest scientific projects ever undertaken.
These are some of the topics covered in this book. It first establishes the basis of the theory describing the smallest constituents of matter and the role of the Higgs boson. Then it shows how this theory only applies to visible matter, all that we see on Earth, in stars and galaxies, which only accounts for 5 % of the content of the Universe. The rest, that is 95 % of the Universe, consists of "dark matter" and "dark energy", two entities still completely unknown. How do we know this dark matter exists and can it be discovered soon? Could we be at the dawn of a huge revolution in our conception of the material world that surrounds us? Here is your chance to find out.
For fun, a 16-second thrilling video about the book launch.
Available in hardcopy and in paperback from Oxford University Press.
Also in bookstores in the UK, Canada and the United States.
Available in Farsi, Turkish, German, and French,
as well as in Chinese in Taiwan and China
Farsi Turkish German
French Chinese Simplified Chinese
And soon in Greek!
What do journalists say about this book
I am fascinated. You should read it too, everybody can read it and understand it. Madame Gagnon has a knack for finding very efficient images to make us understand extremely complex phenomena.
Catherine Perrin, host of Médium Large on Radio-Canada
A book written for us, absolutely fascinating and even entertaining. It is a very accessible popular science book and one does not even get scared, even though it talks about particle physics. We can understand what this is all about and also, why it is so important.
Karine Morin, journalist at Samedis du Monde, Radio-Canada
Pauline Gagnon tells the wonderful scientific adventure of CERN that led to confirming the existence of the Higgs boson and that should bring a revolution in physics in elucidating big enigmas in the coming years such as the mystery of dark matter or the disappearance of antimatter.
Pauline Gravel, Le Devoir newspaper, Montreal
This book makes particle physics accessible. I understood everything!
Francine Plourde, journalist, Années-Lumière, Radio-Canada
