The Particle Zoo: The Search for the Fundamental Nature of Reality

Author: Gavin Hesketh

Number of Pages: 336

What is everything really made of? If we split matter down into smaller and infinitesimally smaller pieces, where do we arrive? At the Particle Zoo – the extraordinary subatomic world of antimatter, ghostly neutrinos, strange-flavoured quarks and time-travelling electrons, gravitons and glueballs, mindboggling eleven-dimensional strings and the elusive Higgs boson itself. Be guided around this strangest of zoos by Gavin Hesketh, experimental particle physicist at humanity’s greatest experiment, the Large Hadron Collider. Concisely and with a rare clarity, he demystifies how we are uncovering the inner workings of the universe and heading towards the next scientific revolution. Why are atoms so small? How did the Higgs boson save the universe? And is there a Theory of Everything? THE PARTICLE ZOO answers these and many other profound questions, and explains the big ideas of Quantum Physics, String Theory, The Big Bang and Dark Matter… and, ultimately, what we know about the true, fundamental nature of reality.