In a future where science has been erased, an eccentric scientist travels back in time using a machine based on the Higgs boson to recruit a young digital creator and turn him into a messenger of knowledge. As they journey through the history of the universe with humor and wonder, they discover that their adventure is the only hope of rewriting the timeline and awakening humanity before it is too late.
THEMES: Science – Culture – Education – Research – Society.
GENRE: Comedy.
PITCH: What if the Higgs boson could save the future? Not as a grand metaphor, but as a narrative device: a particle turned into a key to travel through time—and, above all, through knowledge.
That is the starting point of What Is a Boson Like You Doing in a Big Bang Like This, a book that transforms centuries of physics into a bold, irreverent educational adventure, where learning science becomes an almost subversive act.
From the very first pages, Salvador—a character as mysterious as he is eccentric, part mad scientist and part unlikely teacher—claims to have built a time machine based on the Higgs boson. He is driven neither by nostalgia nor spectacle: he comes from a future in which science has been silenced and critical thinking has disappeared, and his mission is to intervene before that destiny becomes irreversible.
The plan is as absurd as it is irresistible: to teach the entire history of the universe to a young man named Elrubius so that this knowledge, transmitted like a seed, eventually reaches the author of the book in the past and alters the timeline. From there, the text unfolds as a guided journey through the great adventure of human knowledge.
Salvador leads the reader—and his young companion—through the history of physics with humor, pop references, and total narrative freedom: Newton appears as an obsessive, socially awkward genius who founds modern physics while battling himself; Einstein blows up space and time from a patent office; and quantum mechanics emerges as a creative chaos closer to a video game than to a solemn laboratory image. All of this is explained without solemnity, without fear of mixing memes, popular culture, and scientific rigor.
But the book does not limit itself to historical dissemination. Between explanations, the real story of Javier Santaolalla seeps in: that of a boy who does not fit in, who goes through an adolescence marked by loneliness and confusion, until a book by Stephen Hawking opens a crack toward another possible universe. That discovery acts as the trigger for a vocation that will take him from almost intimate curiosity to fulfilling the dream of working at CERN.
The arrival at the LHC, the tense waiting, the search for the Higgs boson, and the historic announcement of its discovery in 2012 function as an emotional and scientific climax that connects the grand story of the universe with a specific biography. Science ceases to be abstract: it becomes effort, doubt, obsession, and, finally, collective celebration.
All of this culminates in a self-aware meta-literary game: the reader realizes that the very book they are holding is part of the narrative mechanism trying to change the future. What Is a Boson Like You Doing in a Big Bang Like This thus reveals itself as more than a popular science book: it is a passionate defense of knowledge as a form of resistance, and of wonder as a force capable of transforming lives—and perhaps preventing worse futures.
RELEVANT FACTS: Javier Santaolalla is a Spanish physicist and science communicator, recognized for bringing science to a broad audience with humor, clarity, and enthusiasm. A Telecommunications Engineer and PhD in Particle Physics, he worked at CERN as a researcher on the CMS experiment, one of the major international collaborations involved in the discovery of the Higgs boson.
After his time in scientific research, he redirected his career toward communication, becoming one of the most influential science communicators in Spanish. He is the creator of the YouTube channel Date un Voltio, where he explains physics, cosmology, and technology in an accessible and entertaining way, and a cofounder of the collective Big Van: Scientists on Wheels, a pioneer in using humor and performance as tools for science outreach.
Author of several popular science books, his approachable, energetic, and visual style has established him as a key figure in contemporary science communication. He currently has more than 12 million followers across social media and a constant presence at educational and cultural events and in the media.
What Is a Boson Like You Doing in a Big Bang Like This is one of his most successful books, with hundreds of thousands of copies sold. The work intertwines scientific dissemination, adventure, and autobiography in a varied structure rich with adaptation potential. Its plot combines humor, pace, and a clear conflict that would translate well to the screen, along with charismatic characters and emotional arcs that add unusual depth for a science outreach book.
AUDIOVISUAL POTENTIAL: TV series, Miniseries, Feature film, TV film.
AVAILABLE LANGUAGES: Spanish.
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