Present at the Creation: The Story of CERN and the Large Hadron Collider

Dan Brown fans and science buffs alike will be familiar with CERN (The European Organization for Nuclear Research), where scientists probe the origins of our universe using the largest and most powerful machine ever created, the Large Hadron Collider. In the hands of Aczel (The Cave and the Cathedral), a research fellow at Boston University, truth is more compelling than fiction. He describes CERN's ongoing research to find "the last particle needed to confirm the validity of Standard Model of particle physics" and discover the answer to how the universe got its mass. The LHC can accelerate protons up to the very edge of the speed of light; by smashing two beams of accelerated protons together, scientists hope to solve the mystery of what happened in the first "five thousand-trillionths of a second" after the creation of the universe. Aczel brings the non-scientist reader up to speed with a clear description of theoretical and experimental scientific advances over past century and the development of accelerator technology. An exciting, true scientific adventure. Illus. (Oct.)