Explains the principles behind the Hadron Collider as well as the potential it presents. This title considers the development of the Electroweak Theory as a law of nature. It explores the mysteries uncovered and the ones that may be in store with regard to top and bottom quarks. 1 The Nature of the Universe 1 Inward Bound 2 The Fly in the Cathedral 5 2 Atoms 13 3 The Nucleus 31 Neutrons and Protons 31 Radioactivity and Nuclear Fission 34 Beta Radioactivity and Neutrinos 37 Nuclear Stability and Where the Elements Came From 40 Neutrons: When Are They Stable and When Not? 45 4 The Forces of Nature 47 Gravity and Electromagnetism 47 Nuclear Forces 52 5 Nuclear Particles and the Eightfold Way 59 Pions 59 Strange Particles 63 More Hadrons 69 The Eightfold Way: 'A Periodic Table for the Nuclear Particles' 70 6 Quarks 75 Quarks and the Eightfold Way Patterns 75 An 'Atomic' Model of Hadrons 82 Quarks in the Proton 85 7 Quantum Chromodynamics: A Theory for Quarks 91 Colour 91 Colour and Quark Forces 97 Gluons 98 Quantum Chromodynamics and Electrodynamics 101 8 The Electroweak Force 107 History 107 A New Form of Weak Interaction is Predicted 110 The Discovery of Neutral Currents 115 Electromagnetic and Weak Interactions Get Together 115 Does Electron Scattering Respect Mirror Symmetry? 117 Bosons 118 Discovery of the W Boson 119 Conclusions 121 9 From Charm to Top 123 The J/? Meson 126 Charmed Mesons 129 The J/? Significance 131 Charm: A Testbed for Quantum Chromodynamics 131 How Many Quarks? 132 10 The LEP Era 141 Quantum Foresight 143 11 CP Violation and B-Factories 149 CP Symmetry 150 The Strange Case of the Neutral Kaons 151 Beta Decays among the Generations 154 Matter to Antimatter 159 Appendix 11A: CKM and Bottom 161 12 Neutrinos 163 13 Beyond the Standard Model: GUTS, SUSY, and Higgs 173 Coincidences? 174 Particles 174 Forces 174 Supersymmetry 179 Higgs Boson 182 Why Is 1 TeV Special? 184 14 Cosmology, Particle Physics, and the Big Bang 189 Dark Energy 191 Dark Matter 193 The Universe Today 195 Five Stages in a Cooling Universe 196 Light Elements and Neutrinos 199 Quarksynthesis and the Predominance of Matter 200 Exodus 201 Epilogue 202 Glossary 205 Index 213