Reality in the Shadows (or) What the Heck's the Higgs

In recent years we have learned that the commonplace materials described by the scientific findings we have so far discovered portray only a tiny piece of a much greater universe--a universe ruled by tightly wound mysteries that appear to shape reality at both its largest and smallest sizes. That universe is now coming to be better understood. You will see how this has happened and how the shadows in the unknown slowly continue to be lit, identified, and explained.Reality in the Shadows [or] What the Heck's the Higgs? is a chronicle of the men and women who cast light on the mysteries of our existence; a look into some of the brilliant ideas that they presented, and a longer look at the new and even bigger mysteries that cry out for scientific explanation. It is an opportunity to become familiar with that now-famous particle--the Higgs Boson--that is both a telling-out of some very old questions and the beginning for hundreds of new and yet-to-be-answered ones.This book is written for the lay person--someone interested in physics who may not have had a lot of technical or mathematical preparation. It was prepared to make the material engagingly easy to read and provides analogies and explanations that relate to the world we know.