The Particle at the End of the Universe: How the Hunt for the Higgs Boson Leads Us to the Edge of a New World

Scientists are on the brink of the greatest breakthrough in physics since the splitting of the atom: the Higgs boson, the key to understanding why mass exists. Caltech physicist and acclaimed writer Sean Carroll takes readers behind the scenes of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN to meet the scientists and explain this landmark event. What is so special about the Higgs boson? We didn't understand how subatomic particles could have any mass at all until we found it. The fact is, while we have essentially solved the mass question, there are things we didn’t predict. A doorway is opening into the mind boggling, somewhat frightening world of dark matter. We only discovered the electron just over a hundred years ago and considering where that took us—from nuclear energy to quantum computing—the implications of the Higgs discovery hold the potential of changing the world. The Particle at the End of the Universe not only explains the importance of the Higgs boson but also the Large Hadron Collider project itself. Projects this big don’t happen without a certain amount of conniving, dealing, and occasional skullduggery— and Sean Carroll explores it all. This is an irresistible story (including characters now set among other glories to win the Nobel Prize) about the greatest scientific achievement of our time.