Matter

Thanks Prologue 1. The mother of everything A word which has very deep roots ; Morning rituals and due respect for corpses ; Matter in the thoughts of the great thinkers ; An assumption about the stability and persistence of the material universe 2. Atoms and the void The birth of atomism ; Epicurus and Lucretius ; An incredible discovery made by the secretary to an anti-Pope ; Venus Zephyrus and maggots in cheese ; The birth of modern science and atomism 3. They’re just particles The dark side of the Moon 26; Particle hunters; Particles which bond with other particles ; The irresistible force of Eros ; The realm of the shyest and most self-effacing of the particles 33; Five small phenomena 4. Clouds soft matter and the last shamans States of matter ; The strange world of soft materials ; The almost eternal life of the great material structures ; The evanescent world of the most ephemeral forms of matter 5. The triumph and decline of a thousand-year-old assumption Stories of fermions and bosons ; But what really is mass? ; The generation of ’64 ; Geneva the 8th of November 2011 ; A strange field that occupies the whole universe ; The strangeness of the Higgs and the many mysteries it hides 6. Shining stars and black stars What stars are ; The turbulent side of the Sun ; The spectacular end of a tranquil star ; Supernovas and neutron stars 64; Black holes 7. The obscure forms of matter which populate the universe Mostly gas and a pinch of dust ; Milkomeda and the Black Eye Galaxy ; The dark side of matter ; The light which sees dark matter ; The dark kingdom of shadows ; Delicate and gentle messengers 8. What is supporting the water that Bahamut swims in The critical density of the universe ; What the vacuum is ; Where matter comes from ; What will happen to matter in the end 9. The magnificent illusion The great euphoria of mechanistic materialism ; State materialism ; Modern materialism ; But what is matter really ; And what if particles were hiding unspeakable secrets from us Epilogue Index