The beginning of the universe is just a theory, scientists have come up with. All of the knowledge that has been compiled so far is actually a thrillionth of a billionth of a second later (very very small amount of time). The particle that we are looking for, the a-tom (NOTE: different from chemistry atoms). The atom is the smallest particle, it was invented (theoretically) by Democritus 2500 years ago. Even though these particles are invisible to our eye, they are in fact there, and we know that because of the effects they have on other things.
Imagine a soccer game, where the ball is invisible to you. If you watched the interections
of the players, the grass and the slight spherical bulge in the net that happened when the goalie dived to the ground and the crowds cheered, you could conclude that there was something there, that gave meaning to all the rules of the game. To explain the universe, physicists need the absolute smallest building block, and the laws of physics. 
Leon Lederman won a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1988 for his 1961 experiment , the first ever measurement of high energy nutrino collisions that provided the foundation for the "standard model" of particle physics. Physicists have a sense of humour, they measure the age of the universe in seconds; 10^18 seconds.
Leon uses many metaphors in this chapter to help get the importancee and scale of what particle physics is. The name of the book, "The God Particle" is an elusive particle (also known as the Higgs Boson, or Scalar Boson particle) is supose to be able to explain and reveal "extra dimensions" which are more than just the x-y-z of our existance. This particel is hopefully going to sum up the universe and neatly explain it so it can fit on a t-shirt, like Einstiens " F = ma" .
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