
The Infinity Puzzle
Quantum Field Theory and the Hunt for an Orderly Universe
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Narrated by:
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Jonathan Cowley
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By:
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Frank Close
About this listen
The second half of the 20th century witnessed a scientific gold rush as physicists raced to chart the inner workings of the atom. The stakes were high, the questions were big, and there were Nobel Prizes and everlasting glory to be won. Many mysteries of the atom came unraveled, but one remained intractable: what Frank Close calls the "Infinity Puzzle".
The problem was simple to describe. Although clearly very powerful, quantum field theory - the great achievement of the 1930s - was making one utterly ridiculous prediction: that certain events had an infinite probability of occurring. The solution is known as renormalization, which enables theory to match what we see in the real world. It has been a powerful approach, conquering three of the four fundamental forces of nature, and giving rise to the concept of the Higgs boson, the now much-sought particle that may be what gives structure to the universe.
The Infinity Puzzle charts the birth and life of the idea, and the scientists, both household names and unsung heroes, who realized it. Based on numerous firsthand interviews and extensive research, the book captures an era of great mystery and greater discovery. Even if the Higgs boson is never found, renormalization - the pursuit of an orderly universe - has led to one of the richest and most productive intellectual periods in human history. With a physicist's expertise and a historian's care, Close describes the personalities and the competition, the dead ends and the sudden insights, in a story that will reverberate through the ages.
Download the accompanying reference guide.©2011 Frank Close (P)2012 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
The other side of Science
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Physics, with the drama of an Opera
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Terrific overview of QED, QCD, and QFD
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If you could sum up The Infinity Puzzle in three words, what would they be?
I would recommend this first and formost to journalists. It delves in to the politics of the nobel almost as much as the science. It may be hard to follow without prior reading. "The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics was Reborn" really is the best source on audible. It is long but complete.Overall I really liked this book as it filled in parts of the story from another person's perspective, sometimes firsthand.
What was one of the most memorable moments of The Infinity Puzzle?
"Feynman cut in: “When I invented all this 25 years ago ." awesome.Which character – as performed by Jonathan Cowley – was your favorite?
huh?Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
who writes these questions?read this only if you know the history
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Any additional comments?
Listened to it on audio -very good - starting to understand the whole attempt to join the very large with the very small, including quantum gravity, and the "perturbatively non-renormalizable" (or asymtoptically unsafe) infinities involved.I am re-reading it on Kindle, bits at a time, to try to understand and retain it better.
Excellent
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A bit slow for my tastes
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One caveat. While Close's discussions of the scientific material are excellent, it isn't possible to really explain these ideas without getting more technical, and, in particular, using equations. If you didn't already know something about renormalization and effective field theories, or about gauge theory, the book isn't in a position to give you more than a general idea. Nor is it really the point of the book.
Jonathan Crowley was probably not the right choice to narrate this, since it doesn't suit his style, and he's unfamiliar with some of the vocabulary and tries to wing it. He mispronounces "boson," which comes up a lot, and "meson," and spells out SLAC every time he says it, rather than saying it as "slack," as is standard. He's plainly guessing about the pronunciation of Gerard 't Hooft's name, though there are online references that would clear it up. Rather embarrassingly, he refers to "Tiny" Veltman. (Veltman's first name is Martinus, and Tini is a nickname,) It's always odd anyway to hear an actor standing in for a scientist in a first-person account, and Crowley's somewhat leaden performance isn't remotely plausible at that level.
On the other hand, the narration does have the virtue that it presents the material plainly and directly, without trying to punch up the material as many readers of nonfiction do. The mispronunciations are a little annoying, but there's never any confusion about what Crowley's referring to. And he does get points for getting the name "Göteborg" about right. (For some reason Close uses the native Swedish name for the city most of the way through, though he calls it by its English name, Gothenburg, at one point. It's like using the name Roma in some places and Rome in others.)
An informed view of an important period in physics
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Get the WhisperSync version
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Well-crafted quantum journey
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Wonderful summary of the development of quantum mechanics theory
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