Particle Physics

The book I read to research this post was Particle Physics A Very Short Introduction by Frank Close which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. This book is part of a series of approximately 300 which get an expert in a field to write roughly 150 pages as an introduction to their subject. They are generally fairly although this book is quite complex in places. It is interesting though especially the stuff on colliders like the one at CERN in Geneva which is 27 km long and underground and uses powerful to bend atoms which are sent around a kind of circular tunnel and made collide with each other. They do this kind of thing to find what comprises an atom, make anti matter and also make plasma. Plasma is a state of matter in much the same way as a liquid or gas except it is super heated by something like a star and contains free flowing electrons. If nucleus of an atom was magnified to the extent it was visible to the human eye, the atom would be 10,000 km across. Most of an atom is comprised of nothingness. This is good because a nucleus is extremely dense for its size. There is also a kind of straight tunnel underground at Stanford University in California that is 7 km long where atoms are fired down and smashed together at high velocity. In the case of most atoms, the nucleus is relatively stable and these tend to have a fairly small nucleus with an equal amount of positive and negative charges. Where we get large nucleus's with different amounts of positive and negative charges, the element decays and gradually turns into something else which is a radio active substance. Not all elements occur in abundance in the Earth's crust, astatine for example has a total amount of less than 1 ounce and generally has to be manufactured in a laboratory. Atoms are also in a constant flux of being recycled and the atoms you are made from have only been in that form for a relatively short period but are as old as the planet and are 1/3 as old as the universe. I did find this book very interesting and enjoyed reading it.