Lucifer's Legacy: The Meaning of Asymmetry - Softcover

Close, Frank

3.74

132 ratings by Goodreads

9780198662679: Lucifer's Legacy: The Meaning of Asymmetry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 019866267X ISBN 13: 9780198662679

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2001

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As we begin a new millennium, it becomes clearer that true understanding of our Universe will come only from identifying and understanding the asymmetries that surround us. While modern scientific theory describes a uniformly perfect and symmetrical creation, we know if that were so, matter would have been destroyed within an instant of its appearance and nothing that we now know could ever have happened. Not only cosmic life but our own everyday variety is full of other examples of asymmetry, from the human body to the molecules of life. In this volume, physicist Frank Close explores the origins of asymmetry from the molecular level to the Universe at large, and asks whether this multitude of examples can be traced back to a single event that took place at the origin of our Universe. Inspired by a chance encounter with a statue of Lucifer in the Tuillerie gardens in Paris, Close takes the reader on a sweeping tour of asymmetry in the world around us, from the development of human embryos to the mysterious Higgs boson. His tour culminates in the research now underway at CERN to recreate the Big Bang in Switzerland in 2005 and thus to solve this mystery of the original asymmetry.
Vividly and engagingly written, Lucifer's Legacy reveals that whenever asymmetry occurs in Nature, it points towards deeper truths.

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Review:

Is the universe perfectly balanced? Physicist Frank Close looks at symmetry and the deep structures of the universe in his luminescent book Lucifer's Legacy. Matter and antimatter, positive and negative charge, even the curious properties of quarks all seem to be arranged in diametrically opposed pairs (or triplets, when you consider zero-state properties like neutral charge). Yet we plainly live in a skewed environment--we can't find antimatter unless we make it, almost all of our proteins are left-handed, and there are 10 Windows machines for every Mac. Is this asymmetry essential for life? Is it, in fact, a necessary consequence of creation? Dr. Close examines these questions and more in intimate but not obsessive detail, showing that life as we know it couldn't exist without a few crucial imbalances.

The question of whether or not we just got lucky with this universe is due to be answered in 2005, when CERN, where Close works, will test theories relating to the Big Bang. The author has a gift for explaining the intricacies of particle physics in terms that lay readers can easily grasp and even come to love. His poetic sensibilities, which frame the book and give it its title (from the statue of Lucifer at the Tuileries gardens in Paris), reflect the human and cosmic mysteries inherent in both the nature of physics and the work of physicists. There's a wee bit of math and geometry herein, but not enough to scare off the numerophobic; in fact, the cogent explanations and illustrations may win Close a few converts to hard science. In the final analysis, Lucifer's Legacy carries a hint of irony: it is such a thoroughly good read that you'll find yourself hunting in vain for flaws. --Rob Lightner

About the Author:

Frank Close is Head of Theoretical Physics Division at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and is a Visiting Professor at the University of Birmingham. He was Head of Communications and Public Education at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, from 1997-2000. He has been a Fellow of the Institute of Physics since 1991, and was awarded the Kelvin Medal in 1996. He also lectured at the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in 1993.

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