1964: Physicist Peter Higgs records in his notebook his incredible idea: "There is a particle that explains how matter acquired its mass. Its discovery will open a gateway to a hidden world of particles and forces that we can't even imagine."

"This Higgs particle will never be discovered - I bet $100," later declared Stephen Hawking.

2012: 83-year-old Professor Peter Higgs tears up when he hears the research teams at CERN's Large Hadron Collider in Geneva announce that "a new particle with many similarities to the so-called Higgs particle has been observed."

"I believe Peter Higgs deserves the Nobel Prize," says Stephen Hawking today.

So who is Peter Higgs - the "Einstein" of the 21st century - who has made the scientific community ecstatic with excitement and everyone talking about something they barely understand? What is the coveted Higgs boson? What does it signify for scientific knowledge and humanity?

This book tells the story of an idea that became the target of a global search, costing billions - the chronicle of an incredible adventure starring the most important scientists on the planet, utilizing the largest facilities and most complex machines ever constructed.

"A living reading experience... A rare book of high-quality science journalism."

("Kirkus Reviews")

Inside the machine, fragments of atoms are accelerated to speeds barely below that of light and collide with each other head-on. These controlled violent collisions reproduce the conditions that prevailed during the first moments of the Big Bang: the cosmic explosion that gave birth to the Universe. Amidst these fleeting flashes of a primordial fire, scientists seek answers to the deepest mysteries of nature...