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Neutrino

This is one of the better books for laymen that I have read in a while.  In large part, I think this is due to the fact that I knew very little about the recent developments in astronomy, and was surprised to find that Neutrino Telescopes are alive and well.  The last time I had looked, it was so hard to detect a neutrino, that even thinking of a telescope was absurd.

While the book follows many of the pioneers of the area, I was most intrigued with the storyline that exposed how neutrinos come in three flavors, which can change through interaction with mass and/or time.  Thus, an electron-neutrino at birth, may be a tau-neutrino upon detection.  This is visualized well by Close as neutrinos being like harmonics of several frequencies which interact in wavelike ways as the neutrino travels through space and time.  It is interesting that this is the same visualization invoked by superstring theory.

To explain the flavor-changing behavior, neutrinos (or at least certain flavors of neutrinos) must have mass, which, according to Close, breaks the Standard Model of physics.

The evolution of detectors is also well articulated throughout, and even a layman can get a sense for the scale, precision, and difficulty of building these.  Neutrino detectors are Big Science.  One thing Close avoids is justification for neutrino research; he simply assumes that it is useful.  It would have been nice to understand if, beyond probing the depths of suns and supernovas, neutrino research has any foreseeable applications.

In summary, well worth the $1.89 (plus tax) that I paid at the Border's close-out sale.

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