Yannis Eliopoulos, one of the co-creators of the Standard Model of fundamental particles and forces, explains step by step, with clarity and emphasis on the essentials, everything that is required to understand the physical process that during the early moments of cosmic evolution gave non-zero masses to most elementary particles. The unprecedented publicity caused by the discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN in 2012 is precisely because it was the long-awaited tangible evidence of this - crucial for the shape of the world - process.
After introducing the necessary knowledge of modern cosmology, Yannis Eliopoulos clarifies the concept of physical symmetries and their breaking during phase transitions, as well as their role in the formation of the Standard Model. He highlights how three basic elements of this formation lead, each separately, to mass problems, as they require the masses of almost all elementary particles to be zero. He then explains the "miraculous" physical process that solves the mass problems when these three elements are combined into a unified dynamics, as happens in the Standard Model and, more generally, in theories with local symmetries and spontaneous symmetry breaking. Finally, after reviewing the experimental confirmations of the Standard Model, the author explains how we are now led to the convincing connection of early cosmological phenomena with high-energy physics at the microscopic level. Two Appendices summarize the basic information required for a fuller understanding of the book by readers without previous background knowledge.