Polyteknisk Boghandel

Denne unikke og meget flotte "coffetable" bog, dokumenterer i tekst og billeder konstruktionen af LHC and den banebrydende forskning der foregår hos CERN.

Bogen er på engelsk, tysk og fransk, og den indeholder flere end 140 farvefotos, taget gennem en 15 årig periode, af den anerkendte fotograf Peter Ginter.

Den henvender sig til alle der interesserer sig for fysik og forskning generelt.

Fra bogens forord:

LHC: Large Hadron Colider is the name of the machine that will offer science insight into the
beginnings of our Universe. Peter Ginter, one of the worlds best photographers, author Franzobel, and Rolf-Dieter Heuer, Director General of CERN, tackle the subject of the largest and most complex machine ever imagined by man, the world machine.

• What do we really know about reality?
  
• Isnt everything just a façade? A pretty smokescreen?
  
• Are there not all kinds of structures, wire frames, disks, atomic compounds
  behind the backdrop of our existence?

Reality is very different from what we are able to grasp with our minuscule awareness. There is as little room in there for an infinite universe with boundaries as there is for a Big Bang. Art, however, sets out to expand our awareness, to create room for new concepts that are just now being researched in science. Or, as Paul Klee once said, art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.

The same applies to science, especially pure research: it goes far beyond the visible.

Sometimes it is the visions of science that open up new forms to art, and sometimes its the other way around. But at all events both of them, art and science, pursue similar visions. Both deviate from the beaten track of thought and perception to conquer something new with great purpose and creativity.

Both risk going down the wrong path in order to take a short cut or discover new territory. Neither has it easy, because they question the tried and tested and upend the familiar. But it is art and science that advance mankind.

This book is an attempt to master the balancing act between both disciplines. On the one hand it tries to get readers excited about the wonderful world of particlephysics and give them some understanding of the LHC, on the other it is a work of art.

It is both photographic documentation of one of the most fascinating machines in the world and also a literary approach to the most exciting questions of our time. Peter Ginter has been interpreting the LHC artistically for 15 years with his photographs and has created an impressive hymn to research with his images.

The writer Franzobel translated the LHC into his language and Barbara Warmbein contributed the clever captions. It must also be said that the realization of this extraordinary project owes a great deal to the assistance of many other members of staff too. In the final analysis, however, this unique book will be whatever the reader makes of it.

May it inspire you, fascinate and amuse you, and set off a Big Bang in you.