A Zeptospace Odyssey ─ A Journey into the Physics of the LHC

At this very moment the most ambitious scientific experiment of all time is beginning, and yet its precise aims are little understood by the general public. This book aims to provide an everyman's guide for understanding and following the discoveries that will take place within the next few years at the Large Hadron Collider project at CERN. The reader is invited to share an insider's view of the theory of particle physics, and is equipped to appreciate the scale of the intellectual revolution that is about to take place. The technological innovations required to build the LHC are among the most astonishing aspects of this scientific adventure, and they too are described here as part of the LHC story. The book culminates with an outline of the scientific aims and expectations at the LHC. Does the mysterious Higgs boson exist? Does space hide supersymmetry or extend into extra dimensions? How can colliding protons at the LHC unlock the secrets of the origin of our universe? These questions are all framed and then addressed by an expert in the field. While making no compromises in accuracy, this highly technical material is presented in a friendly, accessible style. The book's aim is not just to inform, but to give the reader the physicist's sense of awe and excitement, as we stand on the brink of a new era in understanding the world in which we all live.

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Dr. Gian Francesco Giudice is a theoretical particle physicist and has been a member of the Theoretical Physics Division at CERN since 1993. Born in 1961, he graduated from the University of Padua and obtained his PhD in theoretical physics from ISAS in Trieste. His career has always been closely related to collider research: before coming to CERN he worked at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, near Chicago, as well as at the University of Texas, in the group of Prof. S. Weinberg, during the construction phase of the SSC. He has contributed to our present understanding of particle physics and cosmology with more than a hundred articles published in refereed scientific journals.