“A modern voyage of discovery.” —Frank Wilczek, Nobel Laureate, author of The Lightness of Being
The Higgs boson is one of our era’s most fascinating scientific frontiers and the key to understanding why mass exists. The most recent book on the subject, The God Particle, was a bestseller. Now, Caltech physicist Sean Carroll documents the doorway that is opening—after billions of dollars and the efforts of thousands of researchers at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland—into the mind-boggling world of dark matter. The Particle at the End of the Universe has it all: money and politics, jealousy and self-sacrifice, history and cutting-edge physics—all grippingly told by a rising star of science writing.
When the media announced in early July 2012 that researchers had finally confirmed the existence of the elusive Higgs boson, aka “the God particle,” physicists around the world hailed the discovery as a major scientific breakthrough. To California Institute of Technology researcher Carroll (From Eternity to Here, 2010), the event gave another opportunity to demonstrate what he does best, translating complicated ideas into lay-friendly language. In describing how the Higgs boson was detected after decades of theoretical speculation, Carroll covers a wide swath of science, from the Big Bang to quantum mechanics, as well as the thorny politics behind funding the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, where experiments established the particle’s existence. Along with an overview of abstract concepts like supersymmetry, Carroll more lightheartedly explains why Hollywood loves science and why the world wasn’t likely to end if the collider inadvertently created a mini-black-hole. A first-rate physics guide that enlarges our understanding of the universe we live in. ~ Carl Hays
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