Neutrino Hunters

August 26, 2013
While the Higgs boson has dominated recent physics news, astrophysicist Jayawardhana (Strange New Worlds) directs attention toward neutrinos, the “pathologically shy” elementary particles that offer a window into supernovas and may help answer questions about antimatter, dark matter, dark energy, and the early universe. With no electric charge and very little mass, neutrinos seldom interact with matter, for the most part passing untouched through the Earth itself; detection requires looking for particles created in the wake of the scant interactions that do occur. With clarity and wry humor, Jayawardhana relates how Wolfgang Pauli “invented” the neutrino to explain where missing energy went during beta decay, then later bet a case of champagne that it would never be detected experimentally. After neutrinos were finally observed for the first time in 1956, scientists expanded the hunt from Earth to space, examining the rays emitted by the Sun. From deep underground in South Dakota’s Homestake Gold Mine to Antarctica’s IceCube, currently the world’s largest neutrino detector, Jayawardhana vividly illuminates both the particle that has “baffled and surprised” scientists, and the researchers who hunt it. Agent: John Pearce, Westwood Creative Artists.

October 15, 2013
An astrophysicist explains why scientists are eager to learn more about the elusive, "pathologically shy" neutrino. "[N]eutrinos are the most abundant matter particles in the universe," writes Jayawardhana (Observational Astrophysics/Univ. of Toronto; Strange New Worlds: The Search for Alien Planets and Life beyond Our Solar System, 2011, etc.). "[A]bout a hundred-trillion neutrinos produced in the nuclear furnace at the Sun's core pass through your body every second...yet they do no harm and leave no trace." The author traces their discovery to the dawn of the quantum age, when the release of radioactive materials appeared to challenge conservation of energy. In 1930, physicist Wolfgang Pauli suggested the existence of a putative, still-undetected particle (the neutrino) as a way to balance the energy equation. At that time, only three elementary particles (the proton, the electron and the photon) were known. With the discovery of the neutron, the role of the neutrino in transformations between neutrons and protons became clearer. Jayawardhana explains that despite the fact that fission and fusion release "staggering bursts of these particles," their experimental verification only became possible as an outgrowth of the effort to produce an atomic bomb in the days leading up to World War I. "Since then," he writes, "we have realized that the shy neutrinos hold the key to unraveling a great many cosmic mysteries." Further experiments led to new anomalies and the recognition that the ghostly neutrino was not, as first thought, without mass. Today, we may now be on the verge of "solving the great mystery of how matter came to dominate the universe." Jayawardhana includes a fascinating account of the disputes between the theorists and experimentalists in this epic scientific adventure story with--as of yet--no last chapter.

COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 15, 2013
When physicist Boris Kayser declares, If neutrinos did not exist, we would not be here, he identifies a compellingly immediate reason for investigating these mysterious subatomic particles. But as Jayawardhana teases out the tangled history of neutrino investigations, readers learn of many other reasons that scientists have expended tremendous energy pursuing these elusive gremlins. First glimpsed as a conceptual possibility by theoretical pioneers Pauli and Fermi, the neutrino has tantalized the scientists seeking to verify its existence, repeatedly forcing them to redesign their observational technology and realign their paradigmatic models. Readers visit a neutrino-detector buried deep in a South Dakota mine and retrace the daring thinking that labeled neutrinos of different flavors. Readers also contemplate the exciting inquiries of researchers coaxing from the neutrino the secrets of a big bang yielding a curious matter/anti-matter imbalance and of dying stars erupting in supernovas. Neutrino work even promises technologies for intergalactic communication. A tale of revolutionary science and of the colorful personalities of those who did itmust-reading for armchair physicists!(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)