The International Conference on the History of Original Ideas and Basic Discoveries, held at the "Ettore Majorana" Centre for Scientific Culture in Erice, Sicily, July 27-August 4, 1994, brought together sixty of the leading scientists including many Nobel Laureates in high energy physics, principal contributors in other fields of physics such as high Tc superconductivity, particle accelerators and detector instrumentation, and thirty-six talented younger physicists selected from candidates throughout the world. The scientific program, including 49 lectures and a discussion session on the "Status and Future Directions in High Energy Physics" was inspired by the conference theme: The key experimental discoveries and theoretical breakthroughs of the last 50 years, in particle physics and related fields, have led us to a powerful description of matter in terms of three quark and three lepton families and four fundamental interactions. The most recent generation of experiments at e+e- and proton-proton colliders, and corresponding advances in theoretical calculations, have given us remarkably precise determinations of the basic parameters of the electroweak and strong interactions. These developments, while showing the striking internal consistency of the Standard Model, have also sharpened our view of the many unanswered questions which remain for the next generation: the origin and pattern of particle masses and families, the unification of the interactions including gravity, and the relation between the laws of physics and the initial conditions of the universe.

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Particles, Fields, Space-Time: From Thomson's Electron to Higgs' Boson explores the concepts, ideas, and experimental results that brought us from the discovery of the first elementary particle in the end of the 19th century to the completion of the Standard Model of particle physics in the early 21st century. The book concentrates on disruptive events and unexpected results that fundamentally changed our view of particles and how they move through space-time. It separates the mathematical and technical details from the narrative into focus boxes, so that it remains accessible to non-scientists, yet interesting for those with a scientific background who wish to further their understanding. The text presents and explains experiments and their results wherever appropriate. This book will be of interest to a general audience, but also to students studying particle physics, physics teachers at all levels, and scientists with a recreational curiosity towards the subject. Features Short, comprehensive overview concentrating on major breakthroughs, disruptive ideas, and unexpected results Accessible to all interested in subatomic physics with little prior knowledge required Contains the latest developments in this exciting field

The book is a compilation of the most important experimental results achieved during the past 60 years at CERN - from the mid-1950s to the latest discovery of the Higgs particle. Covering the results from the early accelerators at CERN to those most recent at the LHC, the contents provide an excellent review of the achievements of this outstanding laboratory. Not only presented is the impressive scientific progress achieved during the past six decades, but also demonstrated is the special way in which successful international collaboration exists at CERN.

Not Even Wrong is a fascinating exploration of our attempts to come to grips with perhaps the most intellectually demanding puzzle of all: how does the universe work at its most fundamnetal level? The book begins with an historical survey of the experimental and theoretical developments that led to the creation of the phenomenally successful 'Standard Model' of particle physics around 1975. Despite its successes, the Standard Model does not answer all the key questions and physicists continuing search for answers led to the development of superstring theory. However, after twenty years, superstring theory has failed to advance beyond the Standard Model. The absence of experimental evidence is at the core of this controversial situation which means that it is impossible to prove that superstring theory is either right or wrong. To date, only the arguments of the theory's advocates have received much publicity. Not Even Wrong provides readers with another side of the story.

In 1967 a group of physicists from the University of Bologna, led by A Zichichi, published a proposal to search for a heavy lepton using the Frascati (e+e-) collider. The proposal, whose key pages are reproduced in this book on the 30th anniversary of the publication, was the consequence of many years of work started at CERN, where, in addition to the original idea of searching for a heavy lepton carrying its own leptonic number, new technologies were invented to allow the detection of a signal whose identification against the high background of hadronic processes was extremely difficult.More than ten years of work by A Zichichi, together with his students and his collaborators, have paved the way for the discovery of the Third Family of fundamental particles. In this authoritative volume, a group of eminent physicists unequivocally establishes the origin of the Third Family of the basic constituents of matter.

The new experiments underway at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland may significantly change our understanding of elementary particle physics and, indeed, the universe. Suitable for first-year graduate students and advanced undergraduates, this textbook provides an introduction to the field

The book “Leptons and Quarks” was first published in the early 1980s, when the program of the experimental search for the intermediate bosons W and Z and Higgs boson H was formulated. The aim and scope of the present extended edition of the book, written after the experimental discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, is to reflect the various stages of this 30+ years search. Along with the text of the first edition of “Leptons and Quarks” it contains extracts from a number of books published by World Scientific and an article from “On the concepts of vacuum and mass and the search for higgs” available from www.worldscientific.com/worldscinet/mpla or from arxiv.org/abs/1212.1031.The book is unique in communicating the Electroweak Theory at a basic level and in connecting the concept of Lorenz invariant mass with the concept of the Extended Standard Model, which includes gravitons as the carriers of gravitational interaction.

The Standard Model of particle physics is extremely successful in describing nature. It is, however, incomplete in one major way: the masses of gauge bosons and fermions enter the Standard Model through the Higgs mechanism. That is completely satisfactory technically, but it is not understood physically. We do not yet know what nature really does to give mass to particles. Understanding Higgs physics is necessary in order to complete the Standard Model, and to learn how to extend it and improve its foundations.This book is a collection of current work and thinking about these questions by active workers. It speculates about what form the answers will take, as well as updates and extends previous books and reviews. Some chapters emphasize theoretical questions, some focus on connections with other areas of physics, and some discuss how we can get data to uncover nature's solution. This second edition adds information and insights from the last five years, including the recent indirect but statistically significant evidence for the existence of a Higgs boson from precision measurements. It contains contributions from Blondel, Quiros, Haber, Pokorski, Dawson, Janot, Mrenna, Gunion, Ibanez, Ross, Bigi, Carena, Wagner, Georgi, Chanowitz, Yuan, Hill, and others.

Born in China in 1912, Chien-shiung Wu came to the United States to study physics at the University of California at Berkeley. Madame Wu, as she was called, was one of the most distinguished women physicists of her time, and served as the first female president of the American Physical Society in the 1970s.