This stunning new book delves into the world of modern science to reveal a darker side. It begins in the year 2014 and predicts the future of the Large Hadron Collider, a story of dark research, bloodshed, and criminal intrigue. A mysterious coincidence is the fact the LHC was only running on half power up to 2012, a year destined to be eventful, history making, or possibly a huge disappointment in terms of our knowledge of black holes. When the Maya discovered the black hole resting at the centre of our galaxy, they bestowed the name "HUNAB KU," which was the Mayan central sun and creator of all. Black holes were once the stuff of science fantasy but not any longer. In recent years, modern science has confirmed the existence of a super-massive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy, leading many to wonder how Mayans were able to discover this centuries ago. One startling prediction is that, in December 2012, an event will take place that sees the alignment of our Sun with the Galactic equator, which is the location of the mammoth black hole. This has sparked a lot of controversy, but Stephen Hawking and modern science only recently accepted the concept of black holes, so will it be a case of science catching up with the Mayans yet again? The greatest controversy surrounds an alleged prediction that the world will come to an end in 2012. Critics of this statement offer the opinion that 2012 is simply the Mayan calendar coming to an end; therefore, nothing more could have been predicted. Others say that ancient Maya prophets foretold an earth-shattering event would occur on or around this time, which is often described in cataclysmic fashion. They had a glyph that represented the black hole in our galaxy, and Mayans truly believed that it caused our world to go through cycles of birth, death, and rebirth. This book examines a seldom considered possibility, that the black hole threatening Earth's existence may have been created by scientists. In 2012, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, which smashes atoms together to recreate conditions existing at the time of the Big Bang, will finally have its power turned up to full force. A number of court cases had tried to stop the LHC before it created a deadly black hole here on Earth, but CERN brushed them aside as utter nonsense and the court cases have all been dismissed. But when they turn the power up in 2012 and thereafter, who knows what will happen? This book explores one possible outcome of that fateful decision, which leads down a mysterious trail littered with the bodies of fifteen murdered scientists. A crack investigation team is brought in to solve the murders, headed by the brilliant Detective Chief Superintendent Lionel Navarro, who is later joined by US special agent Jenifer Nixon, a female James Bond character. A small team of experts is assembled including one of the world's top scientists, Professor Antoine Taskani and a beautiful female physicist named Sophie Moreau. Taskani is considered a genius and needs to recreate the dangerous Hadron experiments without destroying the world, as this may shed light on the murky investigation. But will he succeed? Very quickly, the team is forced to become the guardians of the new technology and the Hadron experiment is considered the ultimate prize, but dark forces soon try to grasp its secrets in a terrifying journey for the unlikely team. Amid the terror, a love story unfolds but can the combined will of this small team triumph over deadly adversity, and will the world survive?

The Standard Theory of Particle Physics describes successfully the observed strong and electroweak interactions, but it is not a final theory of physics, since many aspects are not understood: (1) How can gravity be introduced in the Standard Theory? (2) How can we understand the observed masses of the leptons and quarks as well as the flavor mixing angles? (3) Why are the masses of the neutrinos much smaller than the masses of the charged leptons? (4) Is the new boson, discovered at CERN, the Higgs boson of the Standard Theory or an excited weak boson? (5) Are there new symmetries at very high energy, e.g. a broken supersymmetry? (6) Are the leptons and quarks point-like or composite particles? (7) Are the leptons and quarks at very small distances one-dimensional objects, e.g. superstrings? This proceedings volume comprises papers written by the invited speakers discussing the many important issues of the new physics to be discovered at the Large Hadron Collider.

This user-friendly book on group theory introduces topics in as simple a manner as possible and then gradually develops those topics into more advanced ones, eventually building up to the current state-of-the-art. By using simple examples from physics and mathematics, the advanced topics become logical extensions of ideas already introduced. In addition to being used as a textbook, this book would also be useful as a reference guide for graduates and researchers in particle, nuclear and hadron physics.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the highest energy collider ever built. It resides near Geneva in a tunnel 3.8m wide, with a circumference of 26.7km, which was excavated in 1983-1988 to initially house the electron-positron collider LEP. The LHC was approved in 1995, and it took until 2010 for reliable operation. By now, a larger set of larger integrated luminosities have been accumulated for physics analyses in the four collider experiments: ATLAS, CMS, LHCb and ALICE.The LHC operates with an extended cryogenic plant, using a multi-stage injection system comprising the PS and SPS accelerators (still in use for particle physics experiments at lower energies). The beams are guided by 1232 superconducting high field dipole magnets.Intense works are underway in preparation of the High Luminosity LHC, aimed at upgrading the LHC and detectors for collecting ten times more luminosity, and extending the collider life to the early 2040's. So far, the (HL-)LHC project represents a cumulation of around one hundred thousand person-years of innovative work by technicians, engineers, and physicists from all over the world; probably the largest scientific effort ever in the history of humanity. The book is driven by the realisation of the unique value of this accelerator complex and by the recognition of the status of high energy physics, described by a Standard Model — which still leaves too many questions unanswered to be the appropriate theory of elementary particles and their interactions.Following the Introduction are: three chapters which focus on the initial decade of operation, leading to the celebrated discovery of the Higgs Boson, on the techniques and physics of the luminosity upgrade, and finally on major options - of using the LHC in a concurrent, power economic, electron-hadron scattering mode, when upgraded to higher energies or eventually as an injector for the next big machine. The various technical and physics chapters, provided by 61 authors, characterise the fascinating opportunities the LHC offers for the next two decades ahead (possibly longer), with the goal to substantially advance our understanding of nature.

An introduction to the world of quarks and leptons, and of their interactions governed by fundamental symmetries of nature, as well as an introduction to the connection that exists between worlds of the infinitesimally small and the infinitely large.The book begins with a simple presentation of the theoretical framework, the so-called Standard Model, which evolved gradually since the 1960s. The key experiments establishing it as the theory of elementary particle physics, but also its missing pieces and conceptual weaknesses are introduced. The book proceeds with the extraordinary story of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN — the largest purely scientific project ever realized. Conception, design and construction by worldwide collaborations of the detectors of size and complexity without precedent in scientific history are discussed. The book then offers the reader a state-of-the art (2020) appreciation of the depth and breadth of the physics exploration performed by the LHC experiments: the study of new forms of matter, the understanding of symmetry-breaking phenomena at the fundamental level, the exciting searches for new physics such as dark matter, additional space dimensions, new symmetries, and more. The adventure of the LHC culminated in the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 (Nobel Prize in Physics in 2013). The last chapter of this book describes the plans for the LHC during the next 15 years of exploitation and improvement, and the possible evolution of the field and future collider projects under consideration.The authors are researchers from CERN, CEA and CNRS (France), and deeply engaged in the LHC program: D Denegri in the CMS experiment, C Guyot, A Hoecker and L Roos in the ATLAS experiment. Some of them are involved since the inception of the project. They give a lively and accessible inside view of this amazing scientific and human adventure.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the field of Higgs boson physics. It offers the first in-depth review of the complete results in connection with the discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider and based on the full dataset for the years 2011 to 2012. The fundamental concepts and principles of Higgs physics are introduced and the important searches prior to the advent of the Large Hadron Collider are briefly summarized. Lastly, the discovery and first mensuration of the observed particle in the course of the CMS experiment are discussed in detail and compared to the results obtained in the ATLAS experiment.

With the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) under construction and due to come online in 2007, it is appropriate to engage in a focused review on LHC phenomenology. At a time when most of the experimental effort is centered on detector construction and software development, it is vitally important to direct the experimental community and, in particular, new researchers on the physics phenomena expected from the LHC. Large Hadron Collider Phenomenology covers the capabilities of LHC, from searches for the Higgs boson and physics beyond the standard model to detailed studies of quantum chromodynamics, the B-physics sectors, and the properties of hadronic matter at high energy density as realized in heavy-ion collisions. Written by experienced researchers and experimentalists, this reference examines the basic properties and potentials of the machine, detectors, and software required for physics analyses. The book starts with a basic introduction to the standard model and its applications to the phenomena observed at high energy collisions. Later chapters describe the key technological challenges facing the construction of the LHC machine, the operating detectors of the LHC, and the vast computing grid needed to analyze the data. In the final sections, the contributors discuss the quark-gluon plasma (QGP), explore questions and predictions for the LHC program, and examine the physics opportunities of the LHC using information from the forward region. By surveying the difficult challenges of the LHC development while also assessing the novel processes that the LHC will perform, Large Hadron Collider Phenomenology aids less seasoned physicists as well as existing researchers in discovering the numerous possibilities of the LHC.

The Nobel Prize-winning physicist and bestselling author of The First Three Minutes describes the grand quest for a unifying theory of nature--one that can explain forces as different as the cohesion inside the atom and the gravitational tug between the sun and Earth. Wirting with dazzling elegance and clarity, he retraces the steps that have led modern scientists from relativity and quantum mechanics to the notion of super-strings and the idea that our universe may coexist with others. But Weinberg asks as many questions as he answers, among them: Why does each explanation of the way nature works point to other, deeper explanations? Why are the best theories not only logical but beautiful? And what implications will a final theory have for our philosophy and religious faith? Intellectually daring, rich in anecdote and aphorism, Dreams of a Final Theory launches us into a new cosmos and helps us make sense of what we find there.

Contents:Quark Mixing and CP Violation (F J Gilman)Heavy Quark Effective Theory (A V Manohar)Introduction to Low-Energy Supersymmetry (G F Giudice)An Introduction to Dynamical Electroweak Symmetry Breaking (R S Chivukula)Hadron Colliders, the Top Quark, and the Higgs Sector (C Quigg)Physics Potential of LEP2 and NLC (R Miquel)Precision Tests of the Electroweak Theory (P Langacker) Readership: High energy physicists. Keywords:

Physics World's 'Book of the Year' for 2016 An Entertaining and Enlightening Guide to the Who, What, and Why of String Theory, now also available in an updated reflowable electronic format compatible with mobile devices and e-readers. During the last 50 years, numerous physicists have tried to unravel the secrets of string theory. Yet why do these scientists work on a theory lacking experimental confirmation? Why String Theory? provides the answer, offering a highly readable and accessible panorama of the who, what, and why of this large aspect of modern theoretical physics. The author, a theoretical physics professor at the University of Oxford and a leading string theorist, explains what string theory is and where it originated. He describes how string theory fits into physics and why so many physicists and mathematicians find it appealing when working on topics from M-theory to monsters and from cosmology to superconductors.