Lisa Randall, theoretical physicist, Harvard University professor, and author of the bestselling Knocking on Heaven’s Door and Warped Passages, explains one of the most remarkable scientific achievements of the twenty-first century—the discovery of the new particle many scientists believe is the Higgs boson—and it’s beautiful implications

For almost fifty years, scientists have been searching for the Higgs boson—the final, elusive piece of the Standard Model of particle physics, which is the theory that describes the most elementary components that are known in matter and how they interact. On July 4, 2012, physicists at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva made history when they discovered an entirely new sub-atomic particle, which many scientists believe is the Higgs boson. An epochal discovery that confirms the consistency of the Standard Model, the Higgs boson is the key to understanding why fundamental particles have mass and tells us something about the nature of space. In Higgs Discovery: The Power of Empty Space, Lisa Randall explains the science behind this monumental discovery, the factors that led to it, and its exhilarating implications.