Neutrino Hunters: The Thrilling Chase for a Ghostly Particle to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe

By Ray Jayawardhana

The incredibly small bits of matter we call neutrinos may hold the secret to why antimatter is so rare, how mighty stars explode as supernovas and what the universe was like just seconds after the big bang. They even illuminate the inner workings of our own planet. For more than eighty years, adventurous minds from around the world have been chasing these ghostly particles, trillions of which pass through our bodies every second. Extremely elusive and difficult to pin down, neutrinos are not unlike the brilliant and eccentric scientists who doggedly pursue them.

Ray Jayawardhana recounts in Neutrino Hunters a captivating saga of scientific discovery and celebrates a glorious human quest, revealing why the next decade of neutrino hunting could redefine how we think about physics, cosmology and our lives on Earth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Dec 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9781443414289

Ray Jayawardhana

RAY JAYAWARDHANA, formerly a professor and the Canada Research Chair in Observational Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, is dean of the faculty of science at York University. A graduate of Yale and Harvard, he has co-authored over 100 scientific papers. His discoveries have made headlines worldwide and have brought him numerous accolades, such as the Steacie Prize, the McLean Award, the Rutherford Medal and the Radcliffe Fellowship. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Economist, Scientific American and other publications. The author of Strange New Worlds, he lives in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter @DrRayJay and on the web at rayjay.net.

Reviews for Neutrino Hunters

[bragan_8 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Neutrinos are tiny subatomic particles with the notable property of being extremely unlikely to interact with other forms of matter. Indeed, trillions of them are passing through your body right now and having absolutely no effect on you at all.But with sufficient ingenuity (and huge quantities of dry-cleaning fluid), it can be possible to detect these elusive particles in the rare instances when they do have an effect. So we know that they do exist. And their existence is important in a surprising number of ways. Learning about neutrinos tells us interesting things about how physics works, about what happens in the centers of stars, and even about the universe on a cosmic scale. Without them, we wouldn't even be here. I already knew most of the science Jayawardhana covers here, since I was a physics major in college. Although he does talk about some interesting things that can be done with neutrinos, such as studying the interior of the Earth, which were new to me and rather fascinating. Anyway, since I already knew a lot of this stuff, I'm probably not the best person to judge whether he's talking about it in a way that makes sense to the layperson. But, while I have one or two small quibbles about how he puts certain things, it seems to me that he generally does a good job of being scientifically accurate without being overwhelmingly technical. And he breaks up the physics with little human-interest details about the scientists involved in making the discoveries he's describing. I've often seen popular science books taking this approach, and it frequently seems awkward or forced, or as if the author is trying to turn science into some kind of dramatic soap opera. But Jayawardhana manages to do it in a way that feels very smooth and natural and interesting.So for me, at least, it was a very readable book, and I certainly feel a new sense of appreciation for neutrinos and the people who hunt them. I'm also impressed, after looking back at the history of our understanding of neutrinos, with the realization that less than a hundred years ago not only did we have no idea what a neutrino was, but the only particles we did know about were the proton and the electron. It's a bit dazzling to look back and realize just how far we've come in our understanding of the underlying nature of reality in such a very short amount of time.

[jbarringer-2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is a great popular science introduction to the topic of neutrinos, written with the general public in mind, clearly written, with more terms and concepts explained than one might see in books written for a professional physics audience, but not watered down or oversimplified. If only my undergrad physics courses had been this informative and interesting, I might have finished a physics degree after all. I did feel motivated after reading this book to participate in a citizen science project, helping hunt for supernovas (since those are neutrino sources and I liked the idea of being able to watch the neutrino signature of a supernova).