Explaining the Higgs
Lisa Randall, the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science in Harvard’s Department of Physics, is an expert on particle physics and in 2007 was named one of Time magazine’s most influential people. Her e-book, “Higgs Discovery: The Power of Empty Space,” which delves into the discovery of the Higgs boson, has been so successful that it was recently released in paperback. Here, Randall discusses her motivation for writing the book and why the Higgs unearthing is so significant. GAZETTE: Why did you write this book, and for whom is it written? RANDALL: The discovery of the Higgs boson was a remarkable event. The particle was predicted based on the need for a consistent theory to describe what was known about nature half a century ago. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the 27-kilometer-circumference machine near Geneva, was built to look for new particles and forces and the underlying nature of matter....