The Higgs Fake, Alexander Unzicker - Book Review

 

Disclaimer: This book discusses a very advanced or rather, the latest major discovery in the field of Quantum Physics. While I have spent a decent amount of time trying to grasp it all, even I don't fully understand the finer details. I have tried to speak in layman's terms, but there might be some parts which go totally over your head. In short, proceed only if you are a science enthusiast. 

So that being said, let's start with it. The Higgs Fake: How Particle Physicists Fooled the Nobel Committee is written by Alexander Unzicker, a German theoretical physicists and this was his second book, the first also being a critic. This book is basically a very harsh critique of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and more specifically the discovery of the Higgs Boson by the scientists working at the LHC in 2012, a year before. Before reviewing the book, I feel it is necessary to give a brief intro about what these two things are. 

The Higgs Boson and the LHC - 

Our story begins way back in the early 20th century, when scientists had discovered and researched everything possible about the three sub atomic particles, neutrons, protons and electrons. One thing they knew for sure now - these weren't "indivisible" as being claimed initially and actually made up of even smaller particles. The dilemma now was, how do we study these even smaller particles? It was here that the idea of a particle accelerator first originated. What it basically suggested was, "Let's make neutrons move at very high speeds and then smash them together." Yep, it's exactly what you are thinking. Funny as it sounds, smashing things together was suddenly the best way to make new scientific discoveries, and that's when the LHC was born. Now, it isn't as easy as it sounds, the LHC took billions of dollars to make and is a 27km ring spanning over 2 countries. It was finally completed in 2008 and within 4 years helped us discover the 'God Particle'. 

Now Higgs Boson is a bit more difficult to explain. Basically, as scientists were discovering more and more particles from the LHC, they had one big dilemma. Top quark and up quark, while being similar in size, had astonishingly different masses. The up quark was 470 times lighter than a proton whereas the top quark was 180 times heavier and nothing was able to explain this strange observation. Enter, Peter Higgs, who proposed the existence of a field with which particles interacted to get mass. This was called the Higgs Field and if we consider it to be a swimming pool, the Higgs Boson is a drop of water. Now I know this sounds very weird and that you might have a ton of questions, or maybe not, depending on whether you are a science buff or not. It's a lot to take in, but unfortunately I can't expand more into the science part of it but I have attached links for people who wanna know more.

The Higgs Fake - 

Finally, having given a brief intro into the science part, let's start with the review. So when the discovery of the Higgs Boson was first announced in 2012, the science world was thrown into a frenzy. Everyone nearly related started praising the scientists responsible, they were given a Nobel Prize etc etc. Now all this was understandable, as this was most probably the biggest discovery that people living right now will witness during their lives. The event of the century, many people called it. However, a year later, when the buzz had somewhat come down, came this book, mercilessly criticizing every aspect of the discovery. A few examples - 

“The Higgs Mass Hysteria If Anything, the Hype of the Century On July 4, 2012, at the famous CERN seminar, scientists applauded, cheered, celebrated. The news spread quickly all over the world that the Higgs had been discovered (nobody cared about the subtleties of “the Higgs” and “a Higgs”), allegedly the verification of an almost 50-year-old idea formulated by a Scottish theoretician. The nonsense starts right here.”

“You are free to complain about my lack of knowledge in complicated details and to mock my supposedly somehow naïve visions. But at the same time I feel free to mock CERN for not making use of the only useful thing it has produced, the World Wide Web.”

“But you don’t have to be an ichthyologist to know when a fish stinks.”

The book basically exposes countless discrepancies in the entire process of the discovery, right from the statistical mistakes to a major problem in the proposed lifetime of the Higgs. It doesn't stop there, but goes on to criticizing the entire field of particle physics. 

"Particle physics is a decades long illogic-creep / rationale decay where poor assumptions are heaped on top of earlier assumptions until the whole endeavor, established as standard practice, ends up stuck in a bog, miles away from physics of reality, of actual phenomenon in nature"

Ouch!

To summarize I want to make a few points,

One, the question is not only of this specific book but critic books in general and their contributions to science. As Napoleon once said, "What is history, but a fable agreed upon?" What he meant was that history is always written by winners which glorifies itself and discredits the losing side. Reading only one sides views can lead to gross misunderstanding of the reality. It is always important to get to know the other side of the story. In science, critics are the other side. They are the ones who highlight the problems in a theory or discovery which eventually go on to help in making a better theory and help us get a step closer to the reality. I always recommend that if you read about any discovery or invention, always read at least one critic to the same. What this does is makes you think actively on the topic rather than just passively accepting what is right. It forces you to form your own thoughts, your own views and then gets you to find evidence for the same. Nine out of ten times, but critic might be completely wrong, but once, like in this case, you will realize that it's not as pretty as it looks. 

So, who is right? I don't know. The Higgs Fake makes some strong and very valid objections to the discovery of the Higgs Boson, but at the same time, it can't be completely wrong. Simply because many experiments conducted in the LHC back up the existence of the Higgs field. Which tells you, as always, the answer is neither white, nor black, it will be somewhere within, some shade of grey. 

Final Rating - 9/10 

Should I read it ? :- In my opinion it is a must read for people who are interested in the field, especially if you have read about the original discovery. If you are not a science buff, you might end up getting bored with the details. 

Note: The scientific events written above might not be in the right chronological order. I have written it in the way I think people will find it the easiest to understand, keeping in mind that this is mainly a book review. If people are interested to know more about the scientific details I would suggest visiting the CERN website. 

So that was it for now, thanks a lot for reading..

Read my other book review - 

https://krishnakabra7.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-atlantis-grail-book-review.html