The Particle at the End of the Universe

how the hunt for the Higgs Boson leads us to the edge of a new world

Hardcover, 368 pages

English language

Published Feb. 6, 2012 by Oneworld Publications.

ISBN:
978-0-525-95359-3
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OCLC Number:
809733802

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(8 reviews)

The Higgs boson. Key to understanding why mass exists and how atoms are possible, this elusive particle has finally been found after $9 billion, decades of effort, and the work of over six thousand researchers at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. In 2012, the history of a quest that began with the atomists of ancient Greece over 2,500 years ago reached a dramatic and historic turning point.

Caltech physicist and acclaimed writer Sean Carroll takes readers behind the scenes of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, to meet the theorists, engineers, and experimentalists, illuminate this landmark event, and explain the science of the Higgs boson, infamously known as "the God Particle."

What is so special about the Higgs boson? As Sean Carroll eloquently explains, without it we wouldn't understand how elementary particles could have mass at all. With it, we have found the final piece of the puzzle …

4 editions

Review of 'The Particle at the End of the Universe' on 'Goodreads'

I liked the explanation of gauge symmetry as it not mattering if your experimental device is rotated compared to someone else's experimental device. This is a good book for laymen/laywomen who are mathphobic as this book (I admit I have only half read it as a lot of the material is already familiar to me) doesn't seem to utilize any.

The hopeful comment in the book about detecting dark matter with the LHC comes off as sad now. The benefits of hindsight, I suppose. They did find the Higgs, though, so that's nice!

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