When I was an elementary student, I had a chance to subscribe a scientific journal called “과학소년” for quite a long time. As a child, I dreamed about being first scientist who build a car that can fly. But through the youth with all kind of tests and grades, my dream has gone, and I know there are invented a flying car, actually selling (PAL-V Liberty) right now. So, I was getting older with no idea of what I want to be, I just forgot about this science journal at all. But when I got this essay assignment, it came to my mind.I read a book “A Zeptospace Odyssey” for the essay. I picked this book because I remembered a picture of LHC on “과학소년”. I searched just for sure and it was on 2008, November issue. I don’t remember whole column of it, but I am sure I was impressed by a picture with big circle in village. I might just glance the column with thought ‘That is a BIG experiment!’.The picture that I remember is called LHC, which stand for Large Hadron Collider. This book tells us LHC is thing of this book is word “Zeptospace” is named by author because he thinks it is a good idea to describe an unusual space exposed at an extremely short distance. From the prologue, I already felt how author think of LHC as exciting journey. Actually, the book was easier than I thought, with my scribbled notepad. In this book review, I have focused on my questions of what LHC is, why they made it, what they found and what their future goal is.Before the LHC, there were other colliders and accelerators which played a significant role in each era. But the special characteristic of the LHC is that it confines protons to very small spaces. Scientists also planned to create a proton collider that reduced the loss due to the emission of synchrotron radiation, a disadvantage of LEP, an electron-position collider that was well suited to study the W and Z particles.Scientists have realized that to explore the structure of the nucleus, they must artificially accelerate the particle to exceed the ts beat that beams to a target made of a thin layer of material. The impactor collides the two particle beams, which run opposite to each other, for digging up the material. And the detector is indispensable to measure many simultaneous proton collisions. The detectors of the LHC are in underground caverns at four locations where the two proton beams crossing in opposite directions intersect. The main detectors ATLAS and CMS record all the results of proton collision like a photo.So, what can we get from LHC? The most notable finding was Higgs boson. Through the LHC, scientists wanted to artificially create how the basic particles have mass in their natural state. Scientists had the theory that nature is a space saturated with Higgs material, not a space without anything, and that the nature saves energy by filling it with Higgs material rather than leaving space empty. In this book, author referred to Higgs material as a dense molasses like fluid that filled the space. Therefore, the something’ rather than a ‘nothing’. On July 4th, 2012, LHC found Higgs boson and mass was found between 125 and 126 GeV. The discovery of Higgs boson received a lot of attention from media and people. Thus, Higgs boson was called “the particle of God” and “the origin of the mass”. But it was very poor name to be called, because there is no rule that Higgs boson can only exists in singular way, and a new kind of phenomenon can be predicted. In other words, the discovery of Higgs boson is a fundamental step in understanding the particle world, not an end!The last part of the book tells us various physics speculations and theoretical hypotheses, like super-symmetry, the new dimensions and dark matter. To be honest, that part was so difficult for me to understand. If there was no terminology explanation behind the book, I would have just given up reading the book.After I read this book, there are two things that remain in my memory. First, I was amazed by continuation of science. For exampinvention of detector led to development of the remedy for the treatment of cancer and the use of synchrotron radiation in microsurgical instruments and electric circuits and even in the restoration of art. Isn’t this cool?Secondly, in the prologue of the book, the author published short conversation of debate about validity of spending $200 million on particle physics business. Robert Wilson, the head of the leading US particle physics laboratory, said the following.In fact, I thought a while about why Korea can’t do thing like this? I thought that our country had a different history from Western countries, so it might be a difference of interest in such fields. We needed more productive science.As I come up with my childhood dream, I also thought that I want to be a part in such a historical discovery. And I saw a book about LHC written by Korean researcher. If I have a chance, I should read it. Surely that I got interested to this. It worth to try read “A Zeptospace Odyssey”. I love
공대생 영어 physics 독후감(A Zeptospace Odyssey)/essay
