Download The Universe

New Media for New Particles

Chasing the Higgs Boson, by Dennis Overbye. New York Times, 2013. Online exclusively.

Reviewed by Sean Carroll.

Back in December, the New York Times published a remarkable online feature: Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek. In the words of Veronique Greenwood, who reviewed it here at DTU, readers were treated to

a piece not only grippingly reported but physically gorgeous, laced with soaring animations of the mountain, a looping GIF of the wind over the snow, and haunting audio and video captured by the survivors.

The effort paid off. The feature was seen by about three million people, a full third of whom had not previously visited the NYT website.

Now the discovery of the Higgs boson, the biggest physics story of recent years, has been treated to -- well, not exactly the same treatment, but something gesturing a bit in that direction. The March 5 Science Times was given over to a set of articles by Dennis Overbye and accompanying illustrations, all devoted to the Higgs, the Large Hadron Collider, and the future of particle physics. The stories are richly illustrated, with a number of animations, and the package includes a helpful glossary and guide to further reading. (I have it on good authority that entertaining and enjoyable books about this very topic are readily available in stores.)

The Higgs is an interesting challenge for science journalism, since while the excitement among physicists is palpable, it's proven very difficult for anyone (scientists or writers) to effectively convey what is so all-fired important about this particular particle. We sometimes hear that it "gives mass" to other particles -- somewhat true, but somewhat untrue as well. (It gives mass to elementary quarks and leptons, but most of the mass in your body comes from protons and neutrons, which are composite particles that don't get their mass from the Higgs at all.) It is very rarely explained with any effectiveness how this particle ends up giving mass to others. And I have seen almost no attempts at a popular-level explanation of the question that the whole discussion begs: Why do we need a particle to "give mass" to other particles at all? Why can't they just have mass without any help? (The answer comes down to the particular symmetries of the Standard Model of particle physics, which treat versions of particles with different kinds of spin as very different beasts, preventing the appearance of mass unless something breaks the symmetries. Hey, there's a good reason why you don't hear a lot of people trying to explain this stuff.)

Overbye, I think wisely, doesn't spend much time on yet another half-successful whack at Higgs pedagogy. Rather, he spins the human tale of the scientists who searched for the particle, conveying the sense of excitement by letting the physicists speak for themselves. And he is a master at teasing out the telling anecdotes. When physicist Eilam Gross brings his girlfriend down to the cavern of the ATLAS experiment to ask her to marry him, you get a feeling for the kind of emotional significance their work has for these researchers. (“But believe me, I checked a thousand times with her before to make sure she will say yes," Gross assures us.)

There is no single "Aha!" moment when looking for a particle like the Higgs; the boson itself decays before you can see it, leaving behind debris that could easily be produced in completely different ways. It's the precise amount of debris that matters (what kinds of particles, with what energies). The scientific task relies on accumulating enough data to claim a statistically significant result, so the discovery of a particle like the Higgs necessarily creeps up on you. Overbye recounts the gradually mounting excitment from 2011, when the first hints appeared, to June 2012, when teams were losing sleep in a mad rush to get the most reliable results possible in time for the scheduled July 4 talks.

And after that, the champagne.

The NYT Higgs special isn't distinguished only by length and the depth of its reporting, but by the graphical accompaniments to the story. There's a video, a timeline, and a couple of animations. It's here that the difficult pedagogical tasks are tackled, with mixed success. The reality is that it's not the Higgs particle that is important, it's the Higgs field that pervades all of space and affects the properties of the other particles moving through it. The Higgs boson is a vibration in the Higgs field, just like a photon is a vibration in the electromagnetic field. But we're used to thinking of particles much more than fields. So we reach for analogies, none of them completely successful, and the animations here are no different. They go so far as to tell us that the Higgs field is "made up of Higgs bosons." That's one of those statements that, although there are interpretations of the underlying reality according to which it is strictly true, nevertheless move the general reader further away from correct understanding rather than closer to it.

There are other quibbles one could raise, but I don't want to dwell on them too much. It's a shame that Phil Anderson, the condensed matter physicist who first suggested what we now call the Higgs mechanism, is nowhere mentioned in the piece. Indeed, as important as Peter Higgs himself was to the story, it is an accident of history that it's his name that is attached to the mechanism, and good journalism should work to redress the balance rather than contribute to it.

Overall, though, there is some great reporting here on a truly historic discovery in the history of physics. The Higgs deserves this kind of more-than-the-usual-effort take on a major scientific story. In the age of Twitter and blogs, it's harder and harder for traditional news media to be there first; but they can still use their resources to do it right.

 

According to the New York Times, Sean Carroll is "a cosmologist and well-known blogger." His most recent book is The Particle at the End of the Universe: How the Hunt for the Higgs Boson Leads Us to the Edge of a New World.

The Science of Sports: An eBook Goes for the Gold, Gets A Bronze

The Science of Sports: Winning in the Olympics. Scientific American $3.99   Kindle, iBook, Nook,  Sony Reader

Guest review by Jaime Green

I love the Olympics, although I'm not sure why. Maybe it's the special-occasion feel, or the every-two-years anticipation--a longer wait than for next Christmas. (I do remember when both summer and winter games were held in the same year, though not well enough to recall whether the four-year wait heightened the thrill or if the crush of excitement was too much, gymnastics and archery only six months from figure luge and ski jump.)

The exotic sports at the Olympics also add to its thrill. Sure, people will snark about the two weeks a year we care about synchronized diving --“Where were you during world championships last year!?”--but for those two weeks we do care! We cram our brains with obscure knowledge. Every four winters we learn about triple axels and the salchow--how the heck to spell salchow--and then we let it all go dormant for the next four years, until we can debate the finer points of fencing again.

It's this thrill of the unusual, and of learning its finer points, that I was looking for in Scientific American's ebook, The Science of Sports: Winning in the Olympics. And coming into it looking for that angle, I was disappointed that the book stayed so true to the first part of its title: the science of sports. That's what this ebook is full of. What it is not full of, and what I missed, was the science of the Olympics.

This first ebook from the editors of Scientific American reads much more like a collection of articles than a single work, and as such it is a perfectly serviceable survey on the science of sports. Pieces are divided into eight sections: The Psychology of Winning, Pushing Human Limits, Drugs and Doping, Concussions, Comeback from Injury, Gear that Gives an Edge, Fitness: Expert Advice for You, and Closing Ceremonies. The pieces, written especially for this ebook by individual Scientific American editors and contributors, explore the physiology, biochemistry, and neurobiology of sports. They also examine recent incidents, such as doping scandals, that bring science and sports together in less savory ways.

Although the lack of unity was sometimes frustrating on a straight-through read--back-to-back articles sometimes retread each other's ground, re-explaining a concept or re-defining a blood protein--it still makes for a nice collection to pick your way through. There's no need to read in order, so you can follow your interests, from the mental acuity of an elite athlete to the most common Olympic injuries and then over to how playing sports can boost children's brain power. You'll learn something cool whichever path you take. And there's a lot to learn. Even if you didn't need this ebook to teach you that the ACL isn't the Achilles tendon but is actually in the knee, there is satisfyingly deep discussion of topics ranging from psychology to blood doping to the physics of prosthetic legs.

The questions tackled in this ebook go beyond the science of sports, too, in several cases engaging with the ethical questions that scientific advances raise. Do steroids make better athletes, or do they make cheaters? How many restrictions should be put on young athletes to protect their brains from concussions? Where does an athlete find the balance between improved performance and dangerously low body fat? These questions make interesting food for thought, and perhaps also foundations for important decisions. The ramifications extend far beyond the Olympic arenas.

Yet I still wished this ebook spent more time within those Olympic arenas. Many pieces focus surprisingly squarely on the topic of the ebook's subtitle: winning. It's as if the ebook's authors decided that Olympic equals elite, and then just wrote about how elite athletes win. But I don't care if Michael Phelps gets the gold. I care that he is stunning to watch. (In the pool, I mean.) And I want to know the science behind his performance--of something that feels specifically, uniquely Olympic. Articles that focused on baseball and American football felt similarly dissatisfying. They're sports, yes, but hardly what we think of as Olympic sports. (In fact, now that baseball's been dropped from the games, neither is an Olympic sport.) For readers drawn to this ebook for the Olympics and not for the sports, this may be a disappointment.

Also potentially disappointing--or virulently frustrating, depending on your level of investment--are some gaps in the scientific and athletic arguments. Jesse Bering's piece, “Why We Love Sports: Success of the Fittest,” proposes that sports compel us as fans and spectators because they serve as a demonstration of reproductive prowess. (Think of football as the peacock tail-feathers of our species.) This argument itself is a stretch. Sports audiences are so dramatically weighted toward men who are not looking to the field for mates. Bering doesn't even give the plausible counterarguments lip service. What about the primal need for play? Tribal affiliations and the strengthening power of us vs. them? The evolution and ritualization of hunting and combat practice? Heck, maybe even mirror neurons, who knows?

In a piece called “Does Exercise Really Make You Stronger?” Coco Ballantyne asserts that “the longer, harder and more often you exercise, the greater the health benefits.” She fails to offer the important caveat against overtraining, which plagues professional and devoted amateur athletes alike, with increased risk of injuries and often dramatic negative effects from overstressing the body. An article on preventing shin splints was similarly narrow-sighted, failing to mention the calf-strengthening exercises that have saved the shins of every new runner I know. 

The highlights of the book examined the subjects that I, and most readers, have no experience with. The articles on top-level cyclists and swimmers, on Olympic runner Oscar Pistorious' prosthetic legs, drew me in much more and carried that charge of the slightly esoteric that make me love the Olympics. Even an article on advanced swim gear brought a little frisson of elite, advanced technology. And “Who Wins the 40-Yard Dash: Squirrel, Elephant, Pig, Human?” armed me for some fun small-talk to fill the breaks between track and field events over the next two weeks.

For the most part, though, the science here is decidedly pedestrian. Readers who want to learn about the geometry of a rhythmic gymnast's twirling ribbon or how a pentathlete slows her heart rate before she shoots will have to wait. Maybe there will be something for us in another four years.

 

Jaime Green is a graduate student in Columbia's MFA writing program. Her work has appeared in The Awl, Spezzatino, The Hairpin, and Parabasis. She is writing a book about the possibility of life in the universe.

Can the wonders of the universe fit on an iPad?

Brian Cox's Wonders of the Universe. Published by Harper Collins. iPad (2 and 3 only) $6.99  iTunes 

Guest review by Jaime Green

When I was in fourth grade, I went to my first and only play date at my then-best friend's house. (We were just old enough that a boy-girl best friendship felt transgressive.) He showed me the periodic table poster in his bedroom, his mother stopped us drinking our sodas half-way through because they had aspartame, and we watched a NOVA special on sub-atomic physics.

It was in that suburban living room that I first fell subject to the power of the science TV program. The glittering animations, the serious but warm voice-over, the waves of knowledge washing over us. And sometimes, the enthusing host: Carl Sagan with his hair held aloft by an ocean wind. Neil de Grasse Tyson in a loud print shirt getting worked up about Isaac Newton. Their personalities and passions are the conduit not just into learning science, but learning to love it.

Brian Cox's Brian Cox's The Wonders of the Universe is one of the new attempts to render this experience portable, bringing Brian Cox – Manchester accent, wind-swept hair and all – into your hands in the form of an app for the iPad 2 or 3.

The Solar System: It's Elementary, My Dear Sherlock

The Solar System, by Marcus Chown. Touch Press, 2010. For iPad.

Reviewed by Jennifer Ouellette

The BBC's hugely popular modern reboot of Sherlock Holmes recasts the world's greatest detective as a high-functioning sociopath (by his own admission) who augments his legendary detection skills with all the latest technologies. Oh, and Watson has a blog.

But his account of their first case together, "A Study in Pink," rubs the detective the wrong way, because Watson has the bad taste to point out glaring holes in Holmes' otherwise impressive encyclopedic knowledge -- namely, he hasn't bothered to learn that the Earth revolves around the Sun. "It's primary school stuff, how could you not know that?" Watson marvels. An exasperated Holmes explains that his big fat brain is precious real estate and he just can't be bothered to store useless trivia; he has to focus on the important things that will help him solve real-world cases.

Watson: But it's the solar system!

Holmes: Oh, hell! What does that matter?! So we go around the sun! If we went around the moon or round and round the garden like a teddy bear, it wouldn't make any difference! All that matters to me is the work! Without that, my brain rots. Put that in your blog - or better still, stop inflicting your opinions on the world!

Let's not address Sherlock's somewhat antiquated notion of how memory works for now. (The computer hard drive analogy is soooo 2000.) I've got good news for the technology-loving consulting detective: now he doesn't have to store all that useless information about celestial bodies in his crammed-to-the-gills noggin, because science writer Marcus Chown and Touch Press have gathered all the essentials into a single iPad app/e-book: The Solar System. It's the follow-up to the publisher's impressive debut, The Elements (reviewed by Deborah Blum here).

Risks and Benefits of the Radium Palace

The Stir of Waters: Radiation, Risk, and the Radon Spa of Jáchymov. By Paul Voosen. Kindle Single

Reviewed by Ann Finkbeiner (guest reviewer)

Jáchymov is an old Czech city set in mountains under which are seams of uranium. The uranium is mined, and through the mines run hot springs -- "hot" both thermally and radioactively. The hot water is piped up into baths for Jáchymov's famous radon (a gas that's a byproduct of uranium) spas. The radon spas are a century old and even now, every year, nearly 20,000 people come to them to bathe and thereby treat a variety of ills. In a normal three-week treatment, the people inhale about 3.5 millisieverts of radiation. That's about forty times the 0.08 millisieverts I received in 1979 before I got in my car and got the hell out of Harrisburg, PA, panicked after the accident at Three Mile Island.

That enormous disconnect between the risk seen by a panicky me and the benefits seen by Jáchymov's customers is what The Stir of Waters is about. My panic about the risk is partly a reflection of the Western world's attitude toward radiation, which is neurotic. The perception of benefit is partly a result of the former Soviet bloc's attitude, which is relaxed and secretive; and partly a result of the relief of the customers' chronic aches and pains, especially for arthritis and auto-immune disorders. So how to balance the risks and benefits of radiation in low doses? Right here, right where you want Science to step out front and adjudicate, Science turns pink and disappears behind the curtains.

Science does know the risks of radiation that's high-dose: experimental subject--from the survivors of Hiroshima to the uranium miners of Jáchymov--die, get sick, get cancers. But scientists can't extrapolate from high dose/lots of sickness to lower dose/less sickness. The low extrapolated numbers of cancers that people might be getting after medical X-rays or radon spas get lost in the numbers of the cancers that people get normally. Scientists can't quantify the risk.

The state of the eBook, early 2012

by John Timmer

It's easy to forget that it's only been five years since Sony and Amazon first started targeting consumers with dedicated eReading hardware. Over the past few years, the painfully slow eInk screens have gotten much faster, while the hardware itself received a touch interface, active color screens, and is now facing tough competition from tablets that let users do a whole lot more than read.  The rapid pace of change has pushed authors, publishers, and content distributors into a period of experimentation, compelling many to try new means of displaying and distributing their works.

Before we started looking at the results of some of that experimentation, we thought we'd step back and look at where things stand right now. What follows is a rough breakdown of the different forms book content is taking as tablets take off, and what those forms mean for authors and publishers.

Basic eBooks:  These are the equivalents of regular books in electronic form, typically the ePub, PDF, and Kindle formats.  These allow some basic control over formatting and chapters, but the format really doesn't add much over traditional forms of publication.  The biggest advantage of these books is that they can run on the widest range of devices, from the eInk screens of low-end Kindles to the active screen of the iPads.  That said, the experiences on these different devices aren't identical.  Complex diagrams, color images, and most photos don't display very well on the eInk screen, so the experience will be decidedly worse for anything that relies on those to get its message across. 

Supported devices:  Just about everything.  Desktops and laptops running the Mac OS and Windows.  All the existing tablets running Android and the iOS.  Dedicated eReader hardware from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Sony, and others.

Opportunity for innovation:  Limited.  Mostly, by limiting the costs (in time and money) involved in putting a book together, the basic eBooks make it much easier to publish shorter works and collections.  They also make self-publishing a viable option.

Staying power:  These formats are not going away.  They're perfectly fine for many purposes, and the device manufacturers that opted for eInk screens have a large base of book buyers to cater to.

Enhanced eBooks:  Think of these as an entire website in eBook form. Navigation can be non-linear, and it's easy to include video and audio content, zoomable images and diagrams, and other interactive media. Detailed color photos and diagrams can be displayed and zoomed.  These are not only a big step up from basic eBooks, but they're a big step up from books in general, providing a degree of interactivity that just isn't possible otherwise. All this makes things like science textbooks and children's literature a viable option.  

Like basic eBooks, however, the enhanced versions require stand-alone software for managing and displaying content—examples include The Atavist and  Apple's updated iBooks. It looks like Amazon and Barnes & Noble may have enhanced book viewing software on their tablets as well. Most of this software, however, is not cross-platform, so choosing one locks you in to a subset of the tablet market.

Supported devices:  Tablets running Android and the iOS. eInk screens simply can't handle multimedia, complex images, or interactivity.  

Opportunity for innovation:  Pretty high, since you can do so much more. But enhanced eBooks still need to be viewed on dedicated software, so they'll necessarily be limited to the features that software supports.

Staying power:  Each one of the software platforms mentioned above will have its own dedicated authoring system and display software. Most of these are tied to specific hardware. It's not likely that all of them will remain viable indefinitely.

Stand alone applications:  At the high end, the boundaries between a book and an application is getting very blurry.  It's possible to make a bundle that contains both the book content and the enhanced eBook viewing software, which can then be distributed as an application. But, for some content, the text is only part of a larger experience, which may involve detailed 3D renderings, user input, and other features that can only be provided by a bespoke application.

Opportunity for innovation:  Enormous. Anything that can be done on the tablet is an option.

Staying power:  Although a couple of the tablet platforms are on life support—WebOS and Blackberry—Android and the iOS look like they'll be here for a while.  Both platforms, however, are adding features at a high rate, so it's possible that some standalone apps will eventually become outdated.

Supported devices:  Tablets again, with apps being platform specific. For the Fire, iPad, and Nook, the manufacturer's approval is required to get your app on the platform.

Our reviews will cover material from all of these categories, although we'll shy away from content that's a straight translation of a print book to eBook form. For basic eBooks, we'll focus on the new formats and collections that electronic publishing has made viable. For everything else, we'll try to evaluate how the rich multimdia capabilities of tablets enhance (or, if it's the case, detract from) the reading experience. And we'll try to make sure that we look at the most innovative approaches to handling content we can find.

And that's where you can help us out. If you're aware of any science-focused eBooks that seem worth paying attention to, please let us know about them.

 

John Timmer spent 15 years doing scientific research before deciding he'd rather write about it. He's now the science editor of the technology news site  Ars Technica. He received a Kindle on the day Amazon first introduced them, and has been following eBook and eReader technology ever since.