FRANK CLOSE

What is nothing What remains when you take all the matter away Can empty space a void exist This Very Short Introduction explores the science and the history of the elusive void from Aristotle who insisted that the vacuum was impossible via the theories of Newton and Einstein to our very latest discoveries and why they can tell us extraordinary things about the cosmos Frank Close tells the story of how scientists have explored the elusive void and the rich discoveries that they have made there He takes the reader on a lively and accessible history through ancient ideas and cultural superstitions to the frontiers of current research He describes how scientists discovered that the vacuum is filled with fields how Newton Mach and Einstein grappled with the nature of space and time and how the mysterious aether that was long ago supposed to permeate the void may now be making a comeback with the latest research into the Higgs field We now know that the vacuum is far from being empty it seethes with virtual particles and antiparticles that erupt spontaneously into being and it also may contain hidden dimensions that we were previously unaware of These new discoveries may provide answers to some of cosmology s most fundamental questions w

Nuclear physics began long before the identification of fundamental particles with J J Thomson s discovery of the electron at the end of the 19th century which implied the existence of a positive charge in the atom to make it neutral In this Very Short Introduction Frank Close gives an account of how this area of physics has progressed including the recognition of how heavy nuclei are built up in the cores of stars and in supernovae the identification of quarks and gluons and the development of quantum chromodynamics QCD Exploring key concepts such as the stability of different configurations of protons and neutrons in nuclei Frank Close shows how nuclear physics brings the physics of the stars to Earth and provides us with important applications particularly in medicine ABOUT THE SERIES The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area These pocket sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly Our expert authors combine facts analysis perspective new ideas and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable

Henry Becquerels accidental discovery, in Paris in 1896, of a faint smudge on a photographic plate sparked a chain of discoveries which would unleash the atomic age.Destroyer of Worlds is the story of how pursuit of this hidden source of nuclear power, which began innocently and collaboratively, was overwhelmed by the politics of the 1930s, and following devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki opened the way to a still more terrible possibility: a thermonuclear bomb, the so-called backyard weapon, that could destroy all life on earth from anywhere.The story spans decades and continents, moving from Becquerel to Ernest Rutherford, the Cambridge-based, New Zealand scientist who first split the atom, expands to include Enrico Fermi in Rome, Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner in Berlin and the Joliot-Curies in Paris, leading to the appearance of Robert Oppenheimer before climaxing with increasingly horrifying developments in the USA and USSR. The roles of three remarkable women Lise Meitner, Ida Noddack and Irene Curie are re-evaluated, and there are new insights into the work of Ettore Majorana, Fermis mercurial but brilliant assistant, who mysteriously disappeared in 1938, possibly after foreseeing the explosive power of nuclear energy. Above all, this is a story of how knowledge is often advanced by personal convictions and relationships, an indeed by chance, in a remarkable way.

The memo landed on Kim Philbys desk in Washington, DC, in July 1950. Three months later, Bruno Pontecorvo, a physicist at Harwell, Britains atomic energy lab, disappeared without a trace. When he re-surfaced six years later, he was on the other side of the Iron Curtain.One of the most brilliant scientists of his generation, Pontecorvo was privy to many secrets: he had worked on the Anglo-Canadian arm of the Manhattan Project, and quietly discovered a way to find the uranium coveted by nuclear powers. Yet when he disappeared MI5 insisted he was not a threat. Now, based on unprecedented access to archives, letters, surviving family members and scientists, award-winning writer and physics professor Frank Close exposes the truth about a man irrevocably marked by the advent of the atomic age and the Cold War.

Si on se débarrasse de toute matière, de la Terre, de la Lune, des étoiles, de tout ce qui est matériel, que reste-t-il ? Le concept de vide a intrigué et fasciné les hommes depuis laube des temps. F

« Bruno Pontecorvo fut certes un grand chercheur, mais fut-il aussi un espion ? D’aucuns l’ont pensé, mais lui l’a toujours nié. À ce jour, aucune preuve ne permet de l’affirmer et nul indice n’oblig

The story of the Higgs boson - the so-called God particle - and the man who thought of itIn the summer of 1964, a reclusive young professor at the University of Edinburgh wrote two scientific papers which have come to change our understanding of the most fundamental building blocks of matter and the nature of the universe. Peter Higgs posited the existence an almost infinitely tiny particle - today known as the Higgs boson - which is the key to understanding why particles have mass, and but for which atoms and molecules could not exist.For nearly 50 years afterwards, some of the largest projects in experimental physics sought to demonstrate the physical existence of the boson which Higgs had proposed. Sensationally, confirmation came in July 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva. The following year Higgs was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. One of the least-known giants of science, he is the only person in history to have had a single particle named for them.This revelatory book is not so much a biography of the man but of the boson named after him. It brilliantly traces the course of much of twentieth-century physics from the inception of quantum field theory to the completion of the standard model of particles and forces, and the pivotal role of Higgss idea in this evolution. It also investigates the contested history of Higgss responsibility for the breakthrough when there were others close by, and explains why the boson is named for him alone. Competition between institutions and states, Close shows, then played as much of a role in creating Higgss fame as his work itself. Drawing on conversations with Higgs over a decade (a figure generally as elusive as his particle) this is a superb study of a scientist and his era - and of how scientific knowledge advances.

En 1930, el físico teórico Wolfgang Pauli postuló la existencia de una diminuta partícula que se emitiría en ciertas transiciones radiactivas: no tendría carga ni prácticamente masa, y apenas interaccionaria con la materia. Pero ¿como detectar esa particula fantasma?Fue Enrico Fermi quien la bautizo como neutrino, y hoy sabemos que billones de estas particulas extraordinarias, reliquias del Big Bang, que generan constantemente el Sol y otras estrellas, atraviesan la Tierra como si no hubiera nada.

Speculation is rife that by 2012 the elusive Higgs boson will be found at the Large Hadron Collider. If found, the Higgs boson would help explain why everything has mass. But theres more at stake -- what were really testing is our capacity to make the universe reasonable. Our best understanding of physics is predicated on something known as quantum field theory. Unfortunately, in its raw form, it doesntt make sense -- its outputs are physically impossible infinite percentages when they should be something simpler, like the number 1. The kind of physics that the Higgs boson represents seeks to "renormalize" field theory, forcing equations to provide answers that match what we see in the real world.The Infinity Puzzle is the story of a wild idea on the road to acceptance. Only Close can tell it.

It was at the height of the Cold War, in the summer of 1950, when Bruno Pontecorvo mysteriously vanished behind the Iron Curtain. Who was he, and what caused him to disappear? Was he simply a physicist, or also a spy and communist radical? A protege of Enrico Fermi, Pontecorvo was one of the most promising nuclear physicists in the world. He spent years hunting for the Higgs boson of his day -- the neutrino -- a nearly massless particle thought to be essential to the process of particle decay. His work on the Manhattan Project helped to usher in the nuclear age, and confirmed his reputation as a brilliant physicist. Why, then, would he disappear as he stood on the cusp of true greatness, perhaps even the Nobel Prize? In Half-Life, physicist and historian Frank Close offers a heretofore untold history of Pontecorvos life, based on unprecedented access to Pontecorvos friends and family and the Russian scientists with whom he would later work. Close takes a microscope to Pontecorvos life, combining a thorough biography of one of the most important scientists of the twentieth century with the drama of Cold War espionage. With all the elements of a Cold War thriller -- classified atomic research, an infamous double agent, a possible kidnapping by Soviet operatives -- Half-Life is a history of nuclear physics at perhaps its most powerful: when it created the bomb. Physics at perhaps its most powerful: when it created the bomb.

Everything about this story is astounding Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times"Trinity" was the codename for the test explosion of the atomic bomb in New Mexico on 16 July 1945. Trinity is now also the extraordinary story of the bombs metaphorical father, Rudolf Peierls; his intellectual son, the atomic spy, Klaus Fuchs, and the ghosts of the security services in Britain, the USA and USSR.Against the background of pre-war Nazi Germany, the Second World War and the following Cold War, the book traces how Peierls brought Fuchs into his family and his laboratory, only to be betrayed. It describes in unprecedented detail how Fuchs became a spy, his motivations and the information he passed to his Soviet contacts, both in the UK and after he went with Peierls to join the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos in 1944. Frank Close is himself a distinguished nuclear physicist: uniquely, the book explains the science as well as the spying.Fuchs returned to Britain in August 1946 still undetected and became central to the UKs independent effort to develop nuclear weapons. Close describes the febrile atmosphere at Harwell, the nuclear physics laboratory near Oxford, where many of the key players were quartered, and the charged relationships which developed there. He uncovers fresh evidence about the role of the crucial VENONA signals decryptions, and shows how, despite mistakes made by both MI5 and the FBI, the net gradually closed around Fuchs, building an intolerable pressure which finally cracked him.The Soviet Union exploded its first nuclear device in August 1949, far earlier than the US or UK expected. In 1951, the US Congressional Committee on Atomic Espionage concluded, Fuchs alone has influenced the safety of more people and accomplished greater damage than any other spy not only in the history of the United States, but in the history of nations. This book is the most comprehensive account yet published of these events, and of the tragic figure at their centre.

En 1930, el físico teórico Wolfgang Pauli postuló la existencia de una diminuta partícula que se emitiríaen ciertas transiciones radiactivas: no tendría carga ni prácticamente masa, y apenas interaccionaria con la materia.Pero ¿como detectar esa particula fantasma? Fue Enrico Fermi quien la bautizo como neutrino, y hoy sabemos que billonesde estas particulas extraordinarias, reliquias del Big Bang, que generan constantemente el Sol y otras estrellas,atraviesan la Tierra como si no hubiera nada.