Among the current books that celebrate the discovery of the Higgs boson, Cracking the Particle Code of the Universe is a rare objective treatment of the subject. The book is an insider's behind-the-scenes look at the arcane, fascinating world of theoretical and experimental particle physics leading up to the recent discovery of a new boson. If the new boson is indeed the Higgs particle, its discovery represents an important milestone in the history of particle physics. However, despite the pressure to award Nobel Prizes to physicists associated with the Higgs boson, John Moffat argues that there still remain important data analyses to be performed before uncorking the champagne.
John Moffat is Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Toronto and a senior researcher at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. Well-known for his outside-the-box research on topics such as dark matter, dark energy, and the varying speed of light cosmology (VSL), his new book takes a critical look at the hype surrounding the Higgs boson. In the process, he presents a cogent and often entertaining history of particle physics and an exploration of alternative theories of particle physics that do not feature the Higgs boson, including his own. He gives a detailed and personal description of how theoretical physicists come up with new theories, and emphasizes how carefully experimental physicists must interpret the complex data now coming out of accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
The book does not shy away from controversial topics such as the sociology of particle physics. There is immense pressure on projects like the $9 billion LHC to come up with positive results in order to secure funding for the future. Yet to date, the Higgs boson may be the only positive result to emerge from the LHC experiments. The searches for dark matter particles, mini-black holes, extra dimensions, and supersymmetric particles have all come up empty-handed, with serious consequences for theoretical physics, including string theory and gravity theory.
John Moffat is also the author of Reinventing Gravity (2008) and Einstein Wrote Back (2010).
Industry Reviews
"The whole book was a delightful reading, some of the cited papers are on my reading list now. The book is also a good mixture in describing theoretical results and experimental methods. I can recommend this book to everyone who is interested in the history of the standard model and how new theories in physics works come into being." -- Torsten Asselmeyer-Maluga, zb Math Open
"John Moffat's book is an unusual mixture of scientific writing, detective story, and romance. It takes us on a very personal quest of understanding the nature of the new particle discovered at the Large Hadron Collider in 2012, highlighting the drama leading to this major discovery and the author's own alternative theoretical views challenged by the ATLAS and CMS experiment data. The author cleverly mixes scientific sections with a day-to-day account of the
events that led to the discovery of the Higgs Boson and its aftermath. This is delightful reading for anyone interested in big science and theoretical ideas that led to the development of the standard
model of particle physics. It is a passionate personal account of one of the most significant discoveries in particle physics of the past few decades." --Greg Landsberg, Brown University, CMS Physics Coordinator 2012-2013
"John Moffat has written a fascinating insider's account of the international struggle of theoretical and experimental physicists to understand the origin of mass, and to develop a simple unified theory of fundamental forces. Unlike most popular books, which focus on just the leading theory, Cracking the Particle Code describes how a plethora of competing ideas arose over the last five decades and how a combination of intuition, mathematical reasoning,
and extraordinary technology is being applied to decide the issue." --Paul Steinhardt, Albert Einstein Professor in Science, Princeton University
"There are many books on the market that describe the Higgs boson discovery. This book's uniqueness is its author's uncompromising drive to question both theory and experiment." --London Times Higher Education
"For a picture of the global nature and excitement of the Higgs discovery, we turn to Cracking the Particle Code of the Universe. Moffat does not hold back on his engagement." --Physics Today
"Moffat's new book is a well-done and well-written survey of the history, achievements, and shortcomings of the Standard Model of particle physics. It will equip the reader with all the necessary knowledge to put into context the coming headlines about new discoveries at the LHC and future colliders." --Physics World
