CHARGE
Why Does Gravity Rule?
Published on 23. May 2024
Book
Hardback
176 pages
978-0-19-888505-4 (ISBN)
Description
Frank Close delves into fundamental particles and forces to find clues to a deep unsolved mystery of physics: why is matter neutral?
Human beings have long been aware of the electric and magnetic forces around us, from the electrostatic charge built up by rubbing amber with fur, to the pull of the lodestone, and scientific investigation showed that the two are intimately connected, as electromagnetism. Lightning shows how devastating electricity can be in nature, while humans learned to exploit the flow of negatively charged electrons that make up an electric current. In the early part of the 20th century, the experiments of Ernest Rutherford showed that at the heart of atoms lies a positively charged nucleus. The positive charge comes from protons. Atoms are neutral because the charges of the electron and proton cancel out. And that enables the much weaker force of gravity - always attractive - to dominate at large scales, building planets, stars, and galaxies. Things would have been very different, had the charges not cancelled.
As far as we know, the charges of the proton and electron are opposite and exactly equal, even though the proton is far bigger, and composed of three quarks tightly bound within it, while the electron is a fundamental particle. But why are they equal? This is one of the deepest unresolved puzzles of fundamental physics, and forms the driving force of this book. To explore the clues we have, Frank Close takes us on a journey into the quantum subatomic world of particles. He describes the strong and weak forces that operate alongside electromagnetism at these short ranges, and the colour and flavour charges that drive them, as well as the parallels between them, giving tantalizing hints of a deeper unity of all forces that is the dream of grand unification theories. Seeking an answer to why matter is neutral brings us to fundamental forces and particles, the Standard Model, the recently discovered Higgs boson, and the implications of grand unification for the stability of matter. Within this compact volume, Close packs in an extraordinarily rich account of our current understanding and the efforts of the latest ambitious experiments to probe further, and test theoretical possibilities such as the decay of protons.
Human beings have long been aware of the electric and magnetic forces around us, from the electrostatic charge built up by rubbing amber with fur, to the pull of the lodestone, and scientific investigation showed that the two are intimately connected, as electromagnetism. Lightning shows how devastating electricity can be in nature, while humans learned to exploit the flow of negatively charged electrons that make up an electric current. In the early part of the 20th century, the experiments of Ernest Rutherford showed that at the heart of atoms lies a positively charged nucleus. The positive charge comes from protons. Atoms are neutral because the charges of the electron and proton cancel out. And that enables the much weaker force of gravity - always attractive - to dominate at large scales, building planets, stars, and galaxies. Things would have been very different, had the charges not cancelled.
As far as we know, the charges of the proton and electron are opposite and exactly equal, even though the proton is far bigger, and composed of three quarks tightly bound within it, while the electron is a fundamental particle. But why are they equal? This is one of the deepest unresolved puzzles of fundamental physics, and forms the driving force of this book. To explore the clues we have, Frank Close takes us on a journey into the quantum subatomic world of particles. He describes the strong and weak forces that operate alongside electromagnetism at these short ranges, and the colour and flavour charges that drive them, as well as the parallels between them, giving tantalizing hints of a deeper unity of all forces that is the dream of grand unification theories. Seeking an answer to why matter is neutral brings us to fundamental forces and particles, the Standard Model, the recently discovered Higgs boson, and the implications of grand unification for the stability of matter. Within this compact volume, Close packs in an extraordinarily rich account of our current understanding and the efforts of the latest ambitious experiments to probe further, and test theoretical possibilities such as the decay of protons.
Reviews / Votes
A little gem of a book. No one describes the building blocks of matter more clearly and delightfully than Frank Close. * Jim Al-Khalili, Author of The Joy of Science and The World According to Physics * Selfish Genes to Social Beings is at its best in the long, fascinating discussions of the complexity of cooperative behaviours across the natural world... Silvertown can talk as easily about the compounds making up your genes as most people can about yesterday's football match. * Jonathan R. Goodman, Nature * A complex, yet intriguing read... The author made this possible with articulate writing, that delivers real-worldly context and understanding to complex areas. * John Mulhall, Irish Tech News * A complex, yet intriguing read... The author made this possible with articulate writing, that delivers real-worldly context and understanding to complex areas. * John Mulhall, Irish Tech News * In a slim, small volume [Close] manages to pack in a huge amount of information without compromising at all on quality... a great book. * Brian Clegg, Popular Science * You couldn't ask for a more insightful and entertaining account, direct from the front lines of evolutionary biology, of why we live in a cooperative world. * Ken Thompson, The Niche * A clear and engaging account. To cover such a broad sweep of modern physics in just 170 pages takes a fair bit of skill and there are precious few folk around capable of pulling it off as nimbly as this. * Steven French, SF (2) Concatenation * This book restores cooperation to its rightful place in the evolutionary story... Fascinating and timely. * The Best New Popular Science Books of 2024, New Scientist * [Close's] prose is delightful... This book will be a valuable addition to college libraries. * A. Spero, CHOICE * Close, a well-known British theoretical physicist and the author of a number of popular books on science, discusses why the charges on the electron and proton are opposite but exactly equal to each other, so that the net charge on an atom can be zero. While this is still a mystery, the discussion leads him through an explanation of the Standard Model of particle physics. His prose is delightful, and his presentation of the concepts of the Standard Model is unusually clear. * A. Spero, CHOICE *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 138 mm
Thickness: 22 mm
Weight
249 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-888505-4 (9780198885054)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Person
Frank Close FRS is an eminent research theoretical physicist in nuclear and particle physics. Currently Emeritus Professor of Physics at Oxford University and a Fellow of Exeter College, he was formerly the Head of the Theoretical Physics Division at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. He served as Chair of the UK Space Exploration Working Group 2007 which culminated with Tim Peake's launch to the ISS. He is the author of several books, including the best-selling Lucifer's Legacy (2000), and his highly acclaimed biography of the Higgs Boson Elusive (2022). His other books include Antimatter (2018), Neutrino (2011), Eclipse: Journeys to the Dark Side of the Moon (2017), and A Very Short Introduction to Nuclear Physics (2015), Particle Physics (2004), and Nothing (2009). In 2013, Professor Close was awarded the Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize for communicating science, and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 2021.
Content
1: A 2500-year-old Mystery
2: The Nuclear Atom
3: The Electromagnetic Force
4: New Agencies
5: Quarks
6: A Quark's Colourful World
7: Janus-faced Quarks
8: The End of the Matter
9: Underground Physics
10: Mysteries
2: The Nuclear Atom
3: The Electromagnetic Force
4: New Agencies
5: Quarks
6: A Quark's Colourful World
7: Janus-faced Quarks
8: The End of the Matter
9: Underground Physics
10: Mysteries