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Knocking on Heaven's Door Knocking on Heaven’s Door KKnockingHeaven_i_xxiv_1_440_F.inddnockingHeaven_i_xxiv_1_440_F.indd i 77/18/11/18/11 44:31:31 PMPM ALSO BY LISA RANDALL Warped Passages KKnockingHeaven_i_xxiv_1_440_F.inddnockingHeaven_i_xxiv_1_440_F.indd iiii 77/18/11/18/11 44:31:31 PMPM Knocking on Heaven’s Door HOW PHYSICS AND SCIENTIFIC THINKING ILLUMINATE THE UNIVERSE AND THE MODERN WORLD Lisa Randall KKnockingHeaven_i_xxiv_1_440_F.inddnockingHeaven_i_xxiv_1_440_F.indd iiiiii 77/18/11/18/11 44:31:31 PMPM Grateful acknowledgment is made to reprint the following: “Come Together” © 1969 Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC. All rights administerd by Sony/ATV Music Publishing, LLC, 8 Music Square West, Nashville, TN 37203. All rights reserved. Used by permission. “Jet Song” by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim. Copyright © 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959 by Amberson Holdings LLC and Stephen Sondheim. Copyright renewed. Leonard Bernstein Music Publishing Company LLC, publisher. Boosey & Hawkes, agent for rental. International copyright secured. Reprinted by Permission. Every attempt has been made to contact copyright holders. The author and publisher will be happy to make good in future printings any errors or omissions. knocking on heaven’s door. Copyright © 2011 by Lisa Randall. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or repro- duced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022. HarperCollins books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promo- tional use. For information please write: Special Markets Department, Harper- Collins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022. fi rst edition Designed by Suet Yee Chong Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Randall, Lisa. Knocking on heaven’s door : how physics and scientifi c thinking illuminate the universe and the modern world / Lisa Randall.—1st ed. p. cm. Summary: “From the one of Time magazine’s “100 Most Infl uential People in the World”—and bestselling author of Warped Passages—an exhilarating and readable overview of the latest ideas in physics and a rousing defense of the role of science in our lives”—Provided by publisher. ISBN 978-0-06-172372-8 1. Science—Social aspects. 2. Physics—Social aspects. I. Title. Q175.5.R365 2011 500—dc22 2011010521 11 12 13 14 15 ov/rrd 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 KKnockingHeaven_i_xxiv_1_440_F.inddnockingHeaven_i_xxiv_1_440_F.indd iviv 77/18/11/18/11 44:31:31 PMPM CONTENTS List of Illustrations vii Introduction xi Part I SCALING REALITY Chapter 1 What’s So Small to You Is So Large to Me 3 Chapter 2 Unlocking Secrets 26 Chapter 3 Living in a Material World 40 Chapter 4 Looking for Answers 59 Part II SCALING MATTER Chapter 5 The Magical Mystery Tour 69 Chapter 6 ”Seeing” Is Believing 94 Chapter 7 The Edge of the Universe 113 Part III MACHINERY, MEASUREMENTS, AND PROBABILITY Chapter 8 One Ring to Rule Them All 127 Chapter 9 The Return of the Ring 143 Chapter 10 Black Holes That Will Devour the World 166 Chapter 11 Risky Business 178 Chapter 12 Measurement and Uncertainty 200 Chapter 13 The CMS and ATLAS Experiments 214 Chapter 14 Identifying Particles 241 Part IV MODELING, PREDICTING, AND ANTICIPATING RESULTS Chapter 15 Truth, Beauty, and Other Scientifi c Misconceptions 259 Chapter 16 The Higgs Boson 276 KKnockingHeaven_i_xxiv_1_440_F.inddnockingHeaven_i_xxiv_1_440_F.indd v 77/18/11/18/11 44:31:31 PMPM vi CONTENTS Chapter 17 The World’s Next Top Model 300 Chapter 18 Bottom-Up Versus Top-Down 332 PART V SCALING THE UNIVERSE Chapter 19 Inside Out 345 Chapter 20 What’s So Large to You Is So Small to Me 360 Chapter 21 Visitors from the Dark Side 377 Part VI ROUNDUP Chapter 22 Think Globally and Act Locally 397 Conclusion 411 Acknowledgments 418 Endnotes 420 Index 426 KKnockingHeaven_i_xxiv_1_440_F.inddnockingHeaven_i_xxiv_1_440_F.indd vivi 77/18/11/18/11 44:31:31 PMPM INTRODUCTION We are poised on the edge of discovery. The biggest and most exciting experiments in particle physics and cosmology are under way and many of the world’s most talented physicists and astronomers are focused on their implications. What scientists fi nd within the next decade could provide clues that will ultimately change our view of the fundamental makeup of matter or even of space itself—and just might provide a more comprehensive picture of the nature of reality. Those of us who are fo- cused on these developments don’t anticipate that they will be mere post- modern additions. We look forward to discoveries that might introduce a dramatically different twenty-fi rst-century paradigm for the universe’s underlying construction—altering our picture of its basic architecture based on the insights that lie in store. September 10, 2008, marked the historic fi rst trial run of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Although the name—Large Hadron Collider— is literal but uninspired, the same is not true for the science we expect it to achieve, which should prove spectacular. The “large” refers to the collider—not to hadrons. The LHC contains an enormous 26.6 kilome- ter1 circular tunnel deep underground that stretches between the Jura Mountains and Lake Geneva and crosses the French-Swiss border. Elec- tric fi elds inside this tunnel accelerate two beams, each consisting of billions of protons (which belong to a class of particles called hadrons— hence the collider’s name), as they go around—about 11,000 times each second. The collider houses what are in many respects the biggest and most impressive experiments ever built. The goal is to perform detailed stud- ies of the structure of matter at distances never before measured and at energies higher than have ever been explored before. These energies KKnockingHeaven_i_xxiv_1_440_F.inddnockingHeaven_i_xxiv_1_440_F.indd xixi 77/18/11/18/11 44:31:31 PMPM xii INTRODUCTION should generate an array of exotic fundamental particles and reveal in- teractions that occurred early in the universe’s evolution—roughly a tril- lionth of a second after the time of the Big Bang. The design of the LHC stretched ingenuity and technology to their limits and its construction introduced even further hurdles. To the great frustration of physicists and everyone else interested in a better under- standing of nature, a bad solder connection triggered an explosion a mere nine days after the LHC’s auspicious initial run. But when the LHC came back on line in the fall of 2009—working better than anyone had dared anticipate—a quarter-century promise emerged as a reality. In the spring of that same year, the Planck and Herschel satellites were launched in French Guiana. I learned about the timing from an excited group of Caltech astronomers who met May 13 at 5:30 a.m. in Pasadena, where I was visiting, to witness remotely this landmark event. The Herschel satellite will give insights into star formation, and the Planck satellite will provide details about the residual radiation from the Big Bang—yielding fresh information about the early history of our uni- verse. Launches such as this are usually thrilling but very tense—since two to fi ve percent fail, destroying years of work on customized scientifi c instruments in those satellites that fall back to Earth. Happily this par- ticular launch went very well and sent information back throughout the day, attesting to just how successful it had been. Even so, we will have to wait several years before these satellites give us their most valuable data about stars and the universe. * * Physics now provides a solid core of knowledge about how the universe works over an extremely large range of distances and energies. Theoreti- cal and experimental studies have provided scientists with a deep under- standing of elements and structures, ranging from the extremely tiny to the very large. Over time, we have deduced a detailed and comprehensive story about how the pieces fi t together. Theories successfully describe how the cosmos evolved from tiny constituents that formed atoms, which in turn coalesced into stars that sit in galaxies and in larger structures KKnockingHeaven_i_xxiv_1_440_F.inddnockingHeaven_i_xxiv_1_440_F.indd xiixii 77/18/11/18/11 44:31:31 PMPM INTRODUCTION xiii spread throughout our universe, and how some stars then exploded and created heavy elements that entered our galaxy and solar system and which are ultimately essential to the formation of life. Using the results from the LHC and from such satellite explorations as those mentioned above, today’s physicists hope to build on this solid and extensive base to expand our understanding to smaller distances and higher energies, and to achieve greater precision than has ever been reached before. It’s an adventure. We have ambitious goals. You have probably heard very clear, apparently precise defi nitions of science, particularly when it is being contrasted with belief systems such as religion. However, the real story of the evolution of science is complex. Although we like to think of it—at least I did when fi rst starting out—as a reliable refl ection of external reality and the rules by which the physical world works, active research almost inevitably takes place in a state of indeterminacy where we hope we are making prog- ress, but where we really can’t yet be sure. The challenge scientists face is to persevere with promising ideas while all the time questioning them to ascertain their veracity and their implications. Scientifi c research in- evitably involves balancing delicately on the edge of diffi cult and some- times confl icting and competing—but often exciting—ideas. The goal is to expand the boundaries of knowledge.
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