Reviews

Structural Chemistry, Vol. 16, No. 5, October 2005
Understanding the Universe: from Quarks to the Cosmos.
By Don Lincoln (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, USA). World Scientific, New Jersey, London, Singapore, etc., 2004. xxiv + 567 pp. $88.00/Ł65.00. ISBN 981-238-703-X (hardcover), $28.00/Ł17.00. ISBN 981-238-705-6 (pbk).

Read review as published in magazine here.

Scientists have long been interested in the nuclear reactions in the Sun and the neutrinos emitted by the Sun carry a lot of information about the mechanism of those reactions. It has been a great challenge to capture and measure those neutrinos. These neutrinos are difficult to detect because they usually fly through matter without interaction, but a few do interact and, for example, when a neutrino hits a chlorine-37 atom, they combine; the result is a radioctive argon-37 isotope and an electron. The realization of this reaction offered a possibility of measuring the number of neutrinos coming from the Sun. In 1964, chemist Raymond Davis and physicist John Bahcall suggested an experiment in which about 380,000 liters of perchloroethylene, C2Cl4 would be used to detect the neutrinos. To have an impression of the enormity of the task from an analytical chemistry point of view, they expected to extract about 90 atoms of argon in this huge reservoir of perchloroethylene during a two-month period. The experiment had to be done in a mine a kilometer and a half deep below ground level in order to minimize interference from common cosmic rays. The results were not quite what they had expected but the information collected has proved to be very useful.

Similar experiments have been carried out in a couple of other locations. I visited one of them a few years ago. That was the Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy, which had originated from a strange opportunity. When the money had run out for completing both directions of the motorway between Rome and the Adriatic Sea, some physicists convinced the Italian government to let them use an al- Eotvos University, H-1518 Budapest, Pf. 32, Hungary. ready built tunnel under the Gran Sasso Mountain to build a laboratory there. Today the motorway is in operation but the belly of the mountain contains a huge physics laboratory that looks more like a science fiction scene than any physics laboratory one sees under ordinary circumstances. In theGran Sasso experiments (GALLEX, GNO) 100 tons of aqueous solution of gallium chloride (GaCl3) was used for the incoming neutrinos to convert gallium atoms into germanium atoms and then comes the daunting chemistry task to collect the handful germanium from the 100 tons of solution. These experiments demonstrate that it is not only the accelerators that are being used to study theworld of the tiniest fundamental particles. Don Lincoln introduces the reader to many similar stories in the lively way of someone who is dedicated to and actively participates in these endeavors of uncovering nature's secrets.

As Nobel laureate Martin Perl notes on the back cover, the book describes not only what we know about our world but also what we would like to know. History and contemporary experiments, etymology and the political background of some important discoveries are just but a few of the features presented in the book. Thus the book has a much broader scope than the example above, which I quoted for flavor. The author does not shy away from attempting to answer the legitimate question about the utility of these expensive experiments. When a senator prodded Robert Wilson, the first director of Fermilab about the value of basic research during a United States Senate hearing,Wilson.s response included the following often quoted statement: "It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to make itworth defending." The book is aimed at non-physicists and the informed layman, but even physicists and astrophysicists should find this book enjoyable and instructive. I strongly recommend it for a broad audience including chemistry students and researchers.

Magdolna Hargittai
Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Eotvos University, Budapest

Choice, a periodical of the American Library Association. (July-August 2005)
Lincoln, an experimental physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, offers lay readers a complete tour of particle physics. Included in this discussion is a history of the important experiments and the plans for future work. Lincoln writes very well, using a mixture of humor, history and analogies as well basic scientific explanations to introduce nonscientists to particle physics. Other reviews have claimed that Lincoln has not pulled this off because of the complexity of the subject. This reviewer does not agree. Though it is going to be difficult for some to keep the array of particles straight, that is part of the present situation in particle physics. Lincoln does a particularly good job of covering the full gamut of particle physics. He looks at what scientists have confidence in and what is considered the cutting edge of theoretical modeling, such as string theory and multiple dimensions. This book would be good for nonphysicists who want an enjoyable, non technical survey of the current state of particle physics. Summing Up: Recommended, General readers. E. Kincanon, Gonzaga University.

CERN Courier. (July-August 2005)
Understanding the Universe: from Quarks to the Cosmos by Don Lincoln, World Scientific. Hardback ISBN 981238703X Ł65 ($88). Paperback ISBN 9812387056 Ł17 ($28).

Read review as published in magazine here.

Do not let the over-ambitious title put you off. Don Lincoln's Understanding the Universe is a recent book about particle physics written by an experimental particle physicist of the Standard Model generation. Here it has a clear advantage over similar but older books that rely on appendices or additions to keep up to date. The book is addressed to the curious layman, with only a murky recollection of school physics, who wants to know how far mankind has gone in understanding the world around us. High-school students with an interest in physics will also find the book exciting and accessible. It is an excellent reference for any scientist who is occasionally unsure how best to explain a particular physics concept to a non-specialist audience.

In the whole book there are few mathematical equations and everything, from the principle of energy conservation to the Higgs mechanism, is explained in plain English. Lincoln does not distract his readers by trying to explain quantum mechanics in any depth. He warns simply that it is a bizarre theory in parts and presents its predictions in a matter-of-fact way.

Lincoln is enthusiastic, even passionate, and a man of some allegiance. Foremost he is a physicist, and in the first sentence of his book states that, in his opinion, physics is the most interesting science. He is an experimentalist, and throughout the book makes good-humoured jokes about his theoretical-physics colleagues. He is an American, often bringing baseball into his many examples. He is a Fermilab boy, from the lab that houses "the highest-energy particle accelerator in the world as of 1971 and probably through 2007, or even beyond". Finally, he is a member of the D0 collaboration with a detector "in some ways significantly superior" to rival CDF. If like most of us you are not from D0, you could forgive Lincoln, as his understanding and explanations of complex phenomena are excellent and the book strikes a balance between depth and accessibility.

The first two chapters provide an historical overview of particle physics from the Greek philosophers to the discovery of the muon neutrino at the beginning of the 1960s. Chapters three and four deal with the Standard Model. Chapter five is devoted to the search for the Higgs particle, and chapter six discusses the basic concepts behind particle acceleration (ignoring focusing and accelerator cavities, however) and detection.

The next two chapters deal with important unanswered questions: chapter seven presents hot research topics such as neutrino physics and charge-parity (CP) violation and chapter eight discusses grander but more speculative ideas including unification, extra dimensions and string theory. Finally, chapter nine covers cosmology - although the book could benefit from a longer discussion of dark energy - and chapter 10 approaches particle physics from the perspective of its benefits to mankind.

The book includes informative, but rather bland, figures. Although Lincoln is too young to include personal recollections of the personalities that shaped particle physics in the 20th century, his second-hand anecdotes and his first-hand account of the discovery of the top quark make interesting reading.

Lincoln cleverly includes an appendix that discusses issues further for the interested reader without obstructing the body of the book. However, it seems unnecessary to include a detailed account of Higgs production and an appendix on the pronunciation of Greek letters (where the reader finds out that alpha is pronounced "al-fuh"). The book also contains an extensive "further reading" section, which lists books and magazine articles (mostly from Scientific American) alongside Lincoln's assessment of them.

Understanding the Universe is recent, informative and accessible. If you come from the US (or, even better, from Illinois), you will enjoy it even more. Mike Koratzinos, CERN.
Author Comment: I somewhat disagree with the parochialism of the book, implied in the review. Many places in the book I specifically stated that the other laboratories and experiments with which I have never been affiliated have done exceptional work. On the other hand, the book does have a slight Fermilab slant, so I won't grumble too loudly.

Book News, Inc. (December 2004)
Lincoln, a physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, helps explain, as the foreword writer (a theoretical cosmologist) puts it: "...what compels scientists to work for years on the world's most complicated experiments...." After declaring physics the most interesting science and overviewing its scope for a general audience, he traces the history of what is known/theorized in the field up to "exotic physics" (i.e., the next frontier). Chapters begin with quotes and include down-to-earth explanations. The volume concludes with technical appendices and a glossary. Annotation Š2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The American Scientist (January - February 2005))
Read review as published in magazine here.

Tiny Particles, Big Questions
Kate Scholberg
Understanding the Universe: From Quarks to the Cosmos. Don Lincoln. xxiv + 567 pp. World Scientific Publishing, 2004. Cloth, $88; paper, $28.

In his new book, Don Lincoln takes us on a rollicking tour of the universe: The reader finds out what we particle physicists understand about it, how we arrived at that understanding and where we think we're going next with our research (we may, of course, end up somewhere altogether different). Although some of the territory will be familiar to many readers, Lincoln enlivens the landscape with fresh details, irreverent (yet never unkind) remarks on the cast of characters, and explanations that are homey, humorous and often completely original. Understanding the Universe: From Quarks to the Cosmos reveals that the story of particle physics has been marked by a series of tensions and resolutions, of proliferations followed by unifications. Lincoln underscores this point with a quotation from William James: "Any one will renovate his science who will steadily look after the irregular phenomena. And when the science is renewed, its new formulas often have more of the voice of the exceptions in them than of what were supposed to be the rules."

In the early 20th century, physics seemed to be tidily wrapped up, until some quiet but persistent voices demanded attention. Among the first discrepancies were these discoveries: cathode rays (William Crookes), x rays (Wilhelm Roentgen) and radioactivity (Marie and Pierre Curie). By mid-century, the particle "zoo" had proliferated. The picture came into focus only gradually, but by the end of the century physicists were able to tease order from the apparent chaos.

The hunt for this underlying order led to increasingly sophisticated experimental techniques, culminating in today's town-sized particle accelerators and building-sized detectors. These colossal and complex machines, attended by village-sized collaborations of experimentalists, are designed to observe colliding particles traveling at tremendous velocities in order to reveal the essential elements of their composition and interactions.

Lincoln does a first-class job of explaining just how these fundamental properties emerge from the experimental results. Our current best description of the basic constituents of the universe and their interactions is quite simple: Fundamental matter is made up of only two main types of particles, quarks and leptons, which come in three successively heavier generations. These constituents interact with one another in only four ways, determined by the four forces: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong (or nuclear) force and the weak force. For the latter three, we now know what the associated force transfer particles are: the photon (electromagnetism), the gluon (the strong force) and the W and Z bosons (the weak force).

Lincoln, an experimental physicist at Fermilab, fondly describes his experiences as a member of the D0 (pronounced D-zero) experiment, one of two large international research collaborations involved in the search for the heaviest of the quark flavors, the top quark. It was finally discovered simultaneously by both sets of researchers in 1995. In a chapter on accelerators and detectors, Lincoln explains in some detail the workings of Fermilab's Tevatron, which is four miles in circumference.

Our current picture, the Standard Model of particle physics, may be the most concise and elegant yet, but it's still unsatisfying in many ways. The known particles and forces have been enumerated and described, but no underlying explanation for the observed patterns has been found. Why do quarks and leptons come in three generations of increasing mass? Nobody knows. Why are the masses of the lightest particles, the neutrinos, minuscule compared with those of the quarks? Again, nobody knows. Another yawning gap in our understanding concerns the nature of the forces: We believe that at high energy, electromagnetic, weak and strong forces have the same strength: they unify. But how exactly does the unification happen? Even murkier are questions of whether and how gravity, the weakest force, merges with the other three.

Ask a particle experimentalist to list the field's most compelling questions and the list will certainly include the existence and nature of the Higgs boson (referred to by Leon Lederman, with tongue in cheek, as the "God particle"), which is intimately connected with electroweak unification. Why the Higgs matters is notoriously difficult to explain to the uninitiated: The arguments requiring its existence are quite abstract, and the Higgs seems even to some physicists to be born of "just a math trick." Fortunately, Lincoln is up to the task of making the Higgs concept accessible. There's a chance that the Higgs will be detected in the near term at the Tevatron, but more likely we'll have to wait for the newest, shiniest accelerator on the world scene to be turned on: the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN on the Swiss-French border. The LHC will collide protons and antiprotons. We expect results around the end of the decade. If the telltale signatures of the Higgs fail to appear, we may have an exception raising its voice to herald a new round of glorious confusion.

Lincoln explores in detail many of the questions accessible to physicists in the relatively near term. For example, the reader learns about slippery, faintly interacting neutrinos, which for many years were suspected to have exactly zero mass. However, measurements made recently in giant underground experiments reveal neutrinos to have tiny masses. A new generation of experiments is determining the properties of neutrinos and attempting to understand how they fit into the big picture.

One of the most looming questions of all: Where is all the antimatter? Anti-matter has properties very similar to those of ordinary matter, but matter and antimatter annihilate each other to liberate energy. One would naively think that the universe had been created with equal quantities of matter and antimatter, but the latter exists in our universe only in very tiny quantities. Why the universe we live in is vastly asymmetric in this regard is completely baffling. Tiny differences between the properties of matter and antimatter may give us clues to an explanation for this asymmetry.

Exotic phenomena that may be explored soon include the postulates of supersymmetry, which imply that every known particle has a massive partner with different spin properties. If those postulates hold, theoretical discomforts are eased and force unification is smoothly achieved. Another idea that may be tested in the short term in collider experiments is the possibility that spatial dimensions beyond our familiar three may exist, allowing gravity to partially "leak away," which would account for its extreme feebleness compared with the other forces. Tests of concepts that are even more exotic, such as the idea that the universe consists of tiny wriggling strings, are as yet out of reach but may become possible in the distant future.

Lincoln ends the book with a discussion of cosmology, the study of the history and evolution of the universe. In the last decade, cosmology has become a precision experimental science, thanks to recent tour de force measurements of the cosmic microwave background, galaxy distributions and distant supernovae. The biggest questions on astrophysical scales now overlap those on microscopic scales, and recently the distinction between cosmology and particle physics has become increasingly blurred. We cannot understand the evolution of the universe without understanding the microscopic processes that took place at the earliest times. Astronomers have long puzzled over the nature of the dark matter that makes up a significant fraction of the universe. The hypothesis that this substance is supersymmetric matter will be tested at the LHC. Even more mysterious is the dark energy responsible for the observed accelerating expansion of the universe. That too may have a deep connection with particle physics. Future experiments, both on the scale of the quark and on the scale of the cosmos, will bring new understanding.

In his epilogue Lincoln addresses explicitly the question of why particle physicists ask why. That why is what really animates this book, just as it animates those engaged in research. One can make compelling arguments for the long-term benefits to society of gaining fundamental knowledge, and certainly few particle physicists would deny feeling pleased about applications for their work. But the real reason we do research is simply this: It's tremendously fun to figure the universe out..Kate Scholberg, Physics, Duke University [Author note: She makes one mistake in the review - where she states that the LHC will collide protons and anti-protons. In fact, it is a proton-proton collider.]

Midwest Book Review (January 2005)
Knowledgably written Don Lincoln (an experimental physicist and staff member of the world's premier particle physics laboratory), Understanding The Universe From Quarks To The Cosmos provides the nonspecialist general reader with a fascinating and informative introduction to the complex world of quarks, leptons, and the forces that govern particle physics. Written especially to introduce lay readers to subatomic mysteries, Understanding The Universe From Quarks To The Cosmos discusses the Big Bang, known and proven theories, suspected hypothesese that have yet to be firmly established, cutting-edge discussions of modern particle physics experiments, and much more. Black-and-white diagrams help illustrate the amazing ideas presented with a minimum of mathematics and a maximum of awe. Read review as published in magazine here.

Scientific American Book Club (January 2005)
The poet William Blake wrote of seeing the world in a grain of sand, but modern physics goes much further: by studying subatomic particles on scales as small as 10^-18 meters, we can unlock the mysteries of the entire 10²⁶-meter-wide visible Universe. The intimate connection between the quark and the cosmic is eloquently charted by Don Lincoln in UNDERSTANDING THE UNIVERSE....(it) offers a memorable journey across the far reaches of physical reality.
[Author Note: The actual review is much longer but mostly just recaps the book.]

Symmetry (October 2004)
Read review as published in magazine here.

Understanding the Universe: from Quarks to the Cosmos, Don Lincoln, World Scientific, Singapore, 2004.

The past decade has seen an explosion of books about physics for the non-specialist. However, few of their authors ever get their hands really dirty in among the actual experiments that drive progress in physics. There also seems to be room for a slightly more advanced level of popular science book for those aficionados who have graduated from introductions to relativity, quantum mechanics and cosmology.

Don Lincoln, an experimentalist on DZero at Fermilab, motivates his tale of the development of particle physics, from its origins to its current state, almost entirely by experiments, a refreshing alternative to the usual theoretical treatments. Rather than posing thought experiments, Lincoln describes real experiments that have led to deeper questions and the consequent progress of particle physics. Particularly useful is his discussion of the modern accelerators and detectors that are the workhorses of the field. This is information that would normally be revealed to those embarking on an experimental particle physics program, and almost never to the casual observer or the science-interested general public.

With his light and easy-to-read style, Lincoln's humor and personal tales do much to convey the flavor of modern particle physics research--a picture that is not often painted so realistically in other popular physics books. The content is more complicated than in most similar books, but this is a virtue for its intended audience, as it allows for greater depth.

The book is as current as publication timetables allow, but even since it went to press, the observation of direct CP-violation, higher precision measurements of the top quark mass and other results are missing. But this reflects only the rapid progress of the field, not any weakness of the book. And as Lincoln indicates in his concluding words, there is much research still to be done, and he is keen to get back into it.

Library Journal (August 15, 2004)

"LINCOLN, DON. Understanding the Universe: From Quarks to the Cosmos. World Scientific. 2004. c.553p. illus. ISBN 981-238-703-X. $88; pap. ISBN 981-238-70506. $38. sci"
Lincoln is a physicist and the(sic) collaborating author on numerous research papers at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), where he investigates high energy physics. A veteran of many popular talks on physics, he charmingly relates the tale of humankind's almost insatiable curiosity about the ultimate nature of nature and the quest to determine the basic particles of matter. His style is engaging and obviously directed to informed lay readers, but the more scientifically minded will find it equally appealing. Still, at over 500 pages, it is not light reading. If digested with the notion that this topic is presented in a broad swath, both historically and scientifically, and not meant to be definitive, the work offers readers an appreciation of the investigative procedure, the accumulated body of research, and the people who did the investigating. Recommended for public and academic collections. -- Margaret F. Dominy, Drexel Univ. Lib., Philadelphia

Mensa Bulletin (August 2004)

"Understanding the Universe: From Quarks to the Cosmos" by Don Lincoln (600 pp., photos, diagrams, charts, appendices, bibliography, glossary, pb.; publ. World Scientific, River Edge, N.J.; ISBN 981-238-705-6 -- also available in hardcover). The author is well equipped to write a book on the topic; the subject matter is part of his life's work (he's a leading physicist researcher at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the world's highest energy particle accelerator laboratory). Lincoln has given numerous lectures, including four talks to the Chicago Mensa group. As he explains, rather than writing a "popular" book aimed at the lowest common denominator, he targeted the Mensa-friendly "Scientific American crowd." It is not light reading, but worth the effort. Lincoln begins with a history of the discovery of electrons, protons and neutrons; moves quickly to the latest plateau of quarks, leptons, cosmic rays and antimatter; and forges ahead to the very edge of what's happening today with the search for the Higgs boson. He also devotes a chapter to explaining the experimental methods used to make these exciting discoveries. Other chapters cover the problems and mysteries of particle physics, ending with how all this contributes to the understanding of the birth of the universe itself. Lincoln is careful to distinguish between what is known versus what is merely dreamed. Appendices on Greek symbols, scientific jargon, essential relativity and quantum mechanics will help you recall everything you forgot from your college days.
[Author note: The Mensa Bulletin reviews tend to be a factual recounting of the book, with rarely a strongly expressed positive or negative opinion.]

Publishers Weekly (April 19, 2004)

Lincoln, a high energy physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), has an infectious love for physics. He also occasionally demonstrates a humorous writing style that successfully engages the reader. On the whole, however, his efforts to explain the basics of quantum physics to the lay reader do not succeed because the material he covers is often too complex to be presented in such a superficial manner, despite the book's 600-plus pages. Readers will be lost in a sea of subatomic particles-bosons, leptons, fermions, hadrons, gluons, baryons- and they'll be frustrated by the constant refrain that the material is complicated, but they can turn to the works in the bibliography for more detail. Lincoln does do a credible job of explaining some of the early history of physics, and he brings to life some of the excitement associated with multimillion-dollar physics experiments being done worldwide. He also touches on many of the unresolved mysteries of physics: why there appears to be so much more matter than antimatter, whether there are many more than three spatial dimensions and what constitutes the "missing" matter in the universe, to name just a few. By attempting to cover it all, Lincoln produces a very large but largely unsatisfying volume.
[Author note: Doesn't this sound like someone who isn't interested in science? I wrote the book for science enthusiasts. If you don't like science, this isn't the book for you. I also strongly disagree that the book constantly tells the reader to look at the Suggested Reading.]

Donald Lincoln

Last modified: Mon Feb 27 09:50:21 CST 2006