How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch: In Search of the Recipe for Our Universe, from the Origins of Atoms to the Big Bang
by Harry Cliff
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
—Carl Sagan”
It gets pretty Jabberwocky
in a
weirding way
There is the value of the Higgs field≈246 GeV
which is the equivalent of
42
From this wonderful book I learned the following words:
Protyl
Gazump
Phratry
Gawp
Barmy
“What's more, since there is only one electron field, only one up quark field, and only one down quark field, you and I, dear reader, are connected to each other. Each of our atoms is a ripple in the same cosmic ocean. We are one with each other, and with all of creation.”
field after field
where the absence of a field is also a
field
and that is the
standard model
which only gets us to 5 percent
the rest 95 percent is the weirding way
Starstuff Recipes
“A RECIPE FOR HELIUM— THE PROTON-PROTON CHAIN
Step 1: Two protons collide, briefly forming a highly unstable two-proton nucleus.
Step 2: Before the two-proton nucleus can disintegrate, one of the protons decays into a neutron, forming a deuterium nucleus (one proton, one neutron) and releasing a positron and a neutrino.
Step 3: Another proton collides with the newly formed deuterium nucleus to form helium-3 (two protons, one neutron) and releasing a gamma ray.
Step 4: Two helium-3 nuclei smack into each other and form a nucleus of helium-4 (two protons, two neutrons) sending the two leftover protons flying out.
”
“A RECIPE FOR HELIUM— THE CARBON-NITROGEN-OXYGEN CYCLE
Step 1: A proton tunnels into a carbon-12 nucleus creating a new nucleus of nitrogen-13, which then decays into carbon-13, emitting a positron and a neutrino.
Step 2: A second proton tunnels into the carbon-13 nucleus creating nitrogen-14.
Step 3: A third proton tunnels into the nitrogen-14 nucleus to create oxygen-15, which then decays into nitrogen-15, emitting a positron and a neutrino.
Step 4: Finally, a fourth proton tunnels into the nitrogen-15 nucleus, breaking it apart to form a helium-4 nucleus and the same carbon-12 nucleus we started with.
”
“THE RECIPE FOR CARBON— THE TRIPLE-ALPHA PROCESS
Step 1: Deep inside a star, smack two helium nuclei together to form a highly unstable beryllium-8 nucleus.
Step 2: Quickly now, and by quickly I mean in around one ten-thousandth of a trillionth of a second, fire in another helium nucleus and cross your fingers.”
“Step 3: If you’re very lucky, that helium nucleus will fuse with the beryllium-8 before it can spontaneously disintegrate, producing a nucleus of carbon-12 in Fred Hoyle’s special excited state.
Step 4: Time to cross your fingers again. Some of the time, that excited carbon-12 nucleus will just fall apart again, leaving the three helium nuclei you started with. But with a bit more luck, the excited state will instead de-excite by firing out two gamma rays, leaving us with a newly minted nucleus of good old carbon-12.”
”
“THE RECIPE FOR OXYGEN— THE ALPHA PROCESS
Step 1: Take a freshly baked carbon-12 nucleus and smack it with a helium-4 nucleus.”
“Step 2: Voilà! Oxygen-16 (plus a bit of leftover nuclear energy in the form of a gamma ray).”
Excerpt From: Harry Cliff. “How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch.” iBooks.
“The apparent “blockiness” of matter dissolves when we look closely enough. Particles are not particles, they are passing disturbances in quantum fields, entities that strain the imagination and yet fill every last cubic centimeter of the cosmos. All objects—apple pies, humans, stars—are agglomerations of vast multitudes of these vibrations, moving together in a way that creates the illusion of solidity, of permanence. What’s more, since there is only one electron field, only one up quark field, and only one down quark field, you and I, dear reader, are connected to each other. Each of our atoms is a ripple in the same cosmic ocean. We are one with each other, and with all of creation.”
I'm very enthusiastic about science and particle physics but until I read this book I never found anything coming even close to explaining the contemporary views among scientists.
This was an astonishing book in my opinion tackling very very difficult concepts and being able to convey them with clarity and wit.
There was a lot of insight compressed in this book and I understood almost all of it.
They're really startling sentences in there, I had to keep rereading some parts and googling. The best I've heard or read on the subject, served on a platter, with antimatter.
And there is the antimatter in a jar, he saw it, it's real, you're going to love it. I've never heard anything so fascinating as that.