Lucifer’s Legacy: The Meaning of Asymmetry (Dover Books on Science) by Frank Close (PDF)

Description

This is Frank Close’s masterpiece — his best book, and one of the very best introductions to physics for the layperson. Close is a master expositor. — The (London) Sunday Times”Close’s writing is beguiling, mingling personal and historical anecdote with carefully measured doses of exposition in such a way as to guide the reader painlessly into rather deep intellectual waters.” — Nature “Life, intrinsically related to asymmetries, is the theme of this book, and Close offers us an absorbing and scientifically correct account of symmetry and its deep implications.” — CERN CourierThis thought-provoking work by a physicist and popular science writer explores the origins of asymmetry from the molecular level to that of the universe at large. Frank Close takes the readers on a tour of asymmetry that ranges from the development of human embryos to the mysterious Higgs boson, or “God particle,” and ongoing research at Switzerland’s CERN laboratory.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐The author beautifully narrates to laypersons how broken symmetry, i.e., asymmetry born from symmetry is important in the natural world for the existence of life, molecules, atoms and elementary particles. The riddle of the symmetry associated with the last of these items when the universe was created is yet to be solved in the near future. At the end of the book, the reader will be surprised to learn that Pasteur anticipated the importance of asymmetry in 1860. In an early chapter the author writes about the moderately well-known teaser “Why do mirrors reverse left and right but not top and bottom?” His answer to this is astonishingly simple. However, he should have been careful to give a more educational answer that includes the explanation for the reversal of the left- and right-handedness in mirrors, because he describes about “mirror asymmetric” left-handed and right-handed molecules, right-handedness of DNA and left-handedness of “the mirror DNA,” etc. in a later chapter. [The latest academic articles on the mirror reversal problem can be found in M. C. Corballis, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 163-169 (2000) and T. Tabata and S. Okuda, ibid. pp. 170-173 (2000).] This book would also be interesting for scientists to learn how they can talk well about scientific topics to laypersons. It would have been much better for the book to include a bibliography for citations and further reading.

⭐Katie Mack in •The End of Everything• did a brilliant one-page summary of Frank Close’s book. It’s a little mean. But if you want to know about asymmetry, I’d be sure to read Close’s book.

⭐This book has been around for a while and has, I am sure, accumulated a following. Still it needs a wider audience. Everything that lives, I am convinced exists because of an asymmetry, however slight, with itself or its environment. Symmetry seems to be the compelling idea that we want to pursue. Frank Close takes us on a path we to often discount or deny.

⭐The author is a famous expert of physics; those arguments are about also all the particularities of this matter. The analysis of the symmetry, connecting the usual aspects of the standard theory with the models related to the Weyl geometry.The nature life is rich of several experiments about the many aspects of the knowledge. The examples don’t be obvious, but they are founded on a concrete vision of the matter.

⭐There is a pattern here. It permeates every level of existence, micro and macro. Without this pattern, nothing can exist. Its like a watermark. Mirrors or opposites to the watermark either pass through meaninglessly or take on totally different attributes or in the worse case, suffer total annihilation.I am fortunate to have found this book and I marvel at its revelations. It counts.

⭐When I saw a review of this book I knew that my wife would like it. Her birthday was just a few days away. It arrived one day before her birthday. just enough time to secretly wrap it and hide it!

⭐The book is extremely well written, fascinating, and easy to read. But the best part is the little errata sheet that comes with the book that may make it a collector’s item. There is a drawing in the book of the Tullieries Garden in Paris meant to show the symmetry humans wish to achieve. The drawing has an error that breaks the symmetry, just like the one headless Lucifer statue in the Garden broke the symmetry when the author visited it, giving him a starting point for this book. The errata sheet attempts to restore the symmetry with a new drawing, but the irony has already made its point; human attempts at symmetry are doomed to fail in an asymmetric universe.

⭐I think this was a great book, although it seemed to dwell mostly on anti-particles. It was easy to read and understand by the average person with an interest in astro physics. It doesn’t boggle down one’s mind with the math. I think it’s a book that everyone with an interest in this field should read. I’m glad I read it.

⭐Simple but a slow exposure to a very challenging subject.

⭐「科学は何をしているの？」という好奇心で読み始められる本だと思う。「対称性と非対称性」を鍵にして、自然界の様々な事柄が語られている。まず、話題の幅が広い。エックス線や放射線発見にまつわる人間ドラマから、分子の鏡像対称性、生命の起源、素粒子から宇宙の進化まで扱われている。（陰極線の研究中、勘違いで「心霊体が発生した」と報告された話も紹介されている。）そして、話題の層が厚い。日常の不思議（例えば、歯で年齢の測定は可能か、女性の顔の右半分と左半分のどちらが男性に人気があるか）に始まり、最新の科学が追求する超対称性やヒッグス場といった概念が平易な文章で、比喩、ユーモア、図を交えながら説明されている。この筆者は次の本で、どの様な世界をその語り口で展開してくれるのだろうか、と思わず期待させられた。隅々まで、完璧に理解するのは難しいかもしれない。ただ、細かな部分をとばしても、全体の雰囲気をつかむことはでき、内容が広く深いので、多くの読者が、この本のどこかを「おもしろくて、ためになった」と言えるのではないだろうか。

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