If not, don't sweat it -- no one else has either. The explosion depicted on our cover is an artist's rendition of what happens when protons collide, shattering into smaller particles. One of those particles ought to be something called the Higgs boson, a hypothetical particle that gives matter its mass.

Three hundred feet below the French-Swiss border, UW scientists are playing central roles in a massive experiment to find the Higgs boson and solve some of the biggest mysteries in physics. Follow the story in "Heart of the Matter" in the Fall 2008 issue of On Wisconsin.