The Higgs Boson

Searching for the God Particle

By: Scientific American

Narrated by: Alex Boyles

Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins

Publisher's summary

One of the biggest discoveries in physics, the quest for the Higgs boson demonstrates the value of a good theory. In July 2012, a Higgs-like particle was found near the energies scientists predicted. Now, armed with better evidence and better questions, the scientific process continues. In this audiobook, we’ve gathered our best reporting to explain that process - the theories, the search, the discovery, and the ongoing questions.

©2017 Scientific American, a division of Nature America, Inc. Scientific American is a registered trademark of Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (P)2020 Blackstone Publishing

Excellent popular description

... of the Standard Model, discoveries related to it's predictions and consequences of these discoveries.

Not what I expected

This is a conglomeration of scientific publications instead of a concise book laying out the higgs boson. Sure to this many topics are covered multiple times and it can be hard to keep all of the theories straight in addition to which acronyms mean what.
There are some good sections of information but they are hard to parse into usable information in your head. I find the audio book format to be largely to blame since there are no diagrams even though a few publications mention them.

HIGGS BOSON REDUX

It’s difficult to believe but it has been nine years since the Higgs Boson particle was discovered. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Cern, Switzerland bombarded atoms with protons to reveal a new fundamental particle of atoms known as Higgs Boson. Alex Boyles offers an excellent narration of several “Scientific American” articles written by scientists about the significance and limitations of the Higgs Boson’ discovery.

What seems relevant in listening to these “Scientific American” articles is –Different ways of looking for the truth is critical to the future of humanity. To many, pursuit of natural laws by scientists is key to human survival. Whether a science’ reductionist, entropic theorist, believer in God, or philosopher, a provable “theory of everything” offers growth to science and a possible future for humanity.

A collection of articles

This is not a book but a collection of articles from scientific american on the topic from the '80s to around 2016. I enjoyed the reading as I'm interested in the subject but there are also some drawbacks: 1. no accompanying diagrams 2. articles are not always in chronological order and one is even duplicated 3. some material like technicolor and alternative Higgs explanations from the '80s seemed weird given that Higgs was discovered in 2012. Overall, recommended if you are interested in (particle) physics / cosmology etc

Kudos to those who assembled this

This is an enlightening account of the last 40 or so years in physics. You will get a guilty pleasure feeling when the narrative is from years back and the physicist is so sure about a discovery to be made and it obviously never worked out the way they thought it would. Towards the end of the book, we get into beyond the Standard Model and hear insights in those directions.

Loving the journey

I love hearing other more computational capable primates talk of particle physics, the Higgs am subject, because of the philosophical implications, is by far my second fave subject after astronomy.