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

by S. James Gates, Frank Blitzer, Stephen Jacob Sekula

In recent years, we have learned that the commonplace materials described by the scientific findings we have so far discovered portray but a tiny piece of a much greater universe--a universe ruled by vast 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 and identified.

Reality in the Shadows is a chronicle of the men and women who cast light on these mysteries of our existence, a look into some of the brilliant ideas that they presented, and a longer look at the new and even greater mysteries of the cosmos that now cry for scientific explanation. It is also an opportunity to become familiar with a 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 very interested in this subject, who may not have had a lot of technical preparation. It was prepared to make the material as engagingly easy to read as possible and provides many analogies and explanations.

354 pages, Paperback

Published November 24, 2017

Reviews

[Otto Barz]

See my nomination for a May Science Book Club group read.

[Randall Scalise]

You know that scene in Dead Poets Society where the students tear out a page of the textbook? Tear out the first four chapters written by Frank Blitzer and begin reading the part that Professor Sekula wrote.

[Frank Blitzer]

This non-fiction work is a great expose chronicling ,around a historical background from Aristotle's time to present-day physical understanding, of how the universe works, the principal players involved and the evolution of the science as the story is told in a language the reader will understand.