Includes bibliographical references (p. [311]-320) and index.

Prologue -- The point -- Next to godliness -- Atoms and particles -- The accelerator story -- The largest machine ever built -- Wisdom through smashing -- Particles in the waves -- Through a broken mirror -- Bringing down the house -- Spreading the word -- Nobel dreams -- Beyond this horizon -- Making it worth defending -- Appendix one. Mass and spin -- Appendix two. Standard model particles -- Appendix three. Particles and their interactions.

Scientists have just announced an historic discovery on a par with the splitting of the atom: the Higgs boson, the key to understanding why mass exists, has been found. Carroll takes readers behind the scenes of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN to meet the scientists and explain this landmark event. We only discovered the electron just over a hundred years ago and considering where that took us-- from nuclear energy to quantum computing-- the inventions that will result from the Higgs discovery will be world-changing.