There are sections for Endnotes, a Glossary, a Bibliography and an Index. However, despite that I did learn a number of things I did not know, for me the words of the author and the excellent illustrations were too often more like firefly strobe lighting! A lot more of the book was like a black hole not permitting any light into my brain at all. The journey to define Mass from the ancient Greeks to Isaac Newton to Albert Einstein to Peter Higgs is extremely fascinating, if somewhat opaque to me due to the math proofs!Īs far as I can tell, this is an excellent science book. The ancient Greeks used philosophical thought alone to figure out atoms existed! At one time, the 'weight' of atoms was considered mass, but scientists keep drilling down into the parts of atoms (and gravity) so much, mass has apparently become an energy or a behavior rather than a property. Most particularly, to finally 'see' the aggravating dark energy and dark matter which their maths are demonstrating must be out there! And here, since it could be a type(s) of force and a type of matter(s) all around us.

Or what is apparently popping in and out of space itself. Many physics mathematicians hope for empirical proofs to back their theoretical maths not only to show the validity of maths to describe the physical universe, but also to 'see' what human eyes and minds cannot see or understand very well, such as the quantum forces affecting the particles in a proton, for example.

Not only is he connecting the math to the meaning of the results in this book, he baldly declares often that mathematicians are as floored and full of disbelief by their results as are the uncomprehending public. Mass: the Quest to Understand Matter from Greek Atoms to Quantum Fields' by Jim Baggott is over my paygrade, but nonetheless, I thought it a very informative book about the history of physics. Ranging from the Greek philosophers Leucippus and Democritus, and their theories of atoms and void, to the development of quantum field theory and the discovery of a Higgs boson-like particle, he explores our changing understanding of the nature of matter, and the fundamental related concept of mass. How did this happen? How did the answers to our questions become so complicated and so difficult to comprehend? In Mass Jim Baggott explains how we come to find ourselves here, confronted by a very different understanding of the nature of matter, the origin of mass, and its implications for our understanding of the material world. And, at some point on this exciting journey of scientific discovery, we lost our grip on the reassuringly familiar concept of mass.

They are instead built from ghosts and phantoms, of a peculiar quantum kind. But science has discovered that the foundations of our Universe are not as solid or as certain and dependable as we might have once imagined. The English physicist Paul Dirac called this 'the dream of philosophers'. We imagine that we should eventually run up against some kind of ultimately fundamental, indivisible type of stuff, the building blocks from which everything in the Universe is made. Surely, we can't keep doing this indefinitely. As a few of the philosophers of ancient Greece once speculated, nearly two and a half thousand years ago, matter comes in 'lumps', and science has relentlessly peeled away successive layers of matter to reveal its ultimate constituents. But what is matter, exactly? We are taught in school that matter is not continuous, but discrete. Whatever it is, we call it matter or material substance. Everything around us is made of 'stuff', from planets, to books, to our own bodies.

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