Every second of every day, we are exposed to billions of neutrinos emitted by the Sun, and yet they seem to pass straight through us with no apparent effect at all. Tiny and weakly interacting this subatomic particle may be, but this book will show you just how crucial a role it has played in the evolution of the elements in the universe, and eventually, ourselves. We first start with an introduction to the basics of subatomic physics, including brief backgrounds on the discoveries that set the stage for major 20th century advances. The author, a distinguished theoretical physicist who has researched neutrinos for over thirty years, next explains in nontechnical language how and why the neutrino fits into the wider story of elementary particles. Finally, the reader will learn about the latest discoveries in the past half century of neutrino studies. This semi-popular science book will appeal to any physics students or non-specialist physicists who wish to know more about the neutrino and its role in the evolution of our universe.

Our Universe is majestic, magnificent in its splendour and deeply mysterious at the same time. Throughout this book, we shall try to act as Cosmic Detectives. Through careful observation of some very elementary clues scattered across the sky, we try to gradually discover some of the deepest and darkest secrets or mysteries of the Universe. From our familiar shoreline on the Earth, we dare to venture into the harrowing depths of vast unknown Cosmic abyss. Believe me, it will be a fascinating journey indeed!

Neutrinos - the universe's most elusive citizens. "The Elusive Neutrino" plunges you into the world of these ghostly subatomic particles. They zip through our planet nearly undetected, playing a mysterious role in the cosmos. This book peels back the layers of scientific discovery, tracing the history of the neutrino's hunt and the challenges scientists face in unraveling its secrets. Imagine tiny particles streaming from the sun and exploding stars, passing through you without a whisper. That's the realm of the neutrino. But beyond their ghostly nature, they hold immense potential. By unraveling their properties, we unlock secrets of the universe's formation and evolution. "The Elusive Neutrino" is a captivating journey for anyone curious about the invisible forces that shape our world.

The fascinating story of science in pursuit of the ghostly, ubiquitous subatomic particle—the neutrino. Isaac Asimov is said to have observed of the neutrino: “The only reason scientists suggested its existence was their need to make calculations come out even. And yet the nothing-particle was not a nothing at all.” In fact, as one of the most enigmatic and most populous particles in the universe—about 100 trillion are flying through you every second—the neutrino may hold the clues to some of our deepest cosmic mysteries. In Ghost Particle, Alan Chodos and James Riordon recount the dramatic history of the neutrino—from the initial suggestion that the particle was merely a desperate solution to a puzzle that threatened to undermine the burgeoning field of particle physics to its modern role in illuminating the universe via neutrino telescopes. Alan Chodos and James Riordon are deft and engaging guides as they conduct readers through the experiences of intrepid scientists and the challenges they faced, and continue to face, in their search for the ghostly neutrino. Along the way, the authors provide expert insight into the significance of neutrino research from the particle’s first, momentous discovery to recent, revolutionary advances in neutrino detection and astronomy. Chodos and Riordon describe how neutrinos may soon provide clues to some of the biggest questions we encounter today, including how to understand the dark matter that makes up most of the universe—and why anything exists in the universe at all.

Winner of the Canadian Science Writers Association Science in Society Book Award One of the Best Physics Books of 2013, Cocktail Party Physics Blog, Scientific American Detective thriller meets astrophysics in this adventure into neutrinos and the scientists who pursue them The incredibly small bits of matter we call neutrinos may hold the secret to why antimatter is so rare, how mighty stars explode as supernovae, what the universe was like just seconds after the big bang, and even 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. In Neutrino Hunters, the renowned astrophysicist and award-winning writer Ray Jayawardhana takes us on a thrilling journey into the shadowy world of neutrinos and the colorful lives of those who seek them. Demystifying particle science along the way, Jayawardhana tells a detective story with cosmic implications—interweaving tales of the sharp-witted theorist Wolfgang Pauli; the troubled genius Ettore Majorana; the harbinger of the atomic age Enrico Fermi; the notorious Cold War defector Bruno Pontecorvo; and the dynamic dream team of Marie and Pierre Curie. Then there are the scientists of today who have caught the neutrino bug, and whose experimental investigations stretch from a working nickel mine in Ontario to a long tunnel through a mountain in central Italy, from a nuclear waste site in New Mexico to a bay on the South China Sea, and from Olympic-size pools deep underground to a gigantic cube of Antarctic ice—called, naturally, IceCube. As Jayawardhana recounts a captivating saga of scientific discovery and celebrates a glorious human quest, he reveals why the next decade of neutrino hunting will redefine how we think about physics, cosmology, and our lives on Earth.

The role that neutrinos have played in the evolution of the Universe is the focus of one of the most fascinating research areas that has stemmed from the interplay between cosmology, astrophysics and particle physics. In this self-contained book, the authors bring together all aspects of the role of neutrinos in cosmology, spanning from leptogenesis to primordial nucleosynthesis, their role in CMB and structure formation, to the problem of their direct detection. The book starts by guiding the reader through aspects of fundamental neutrino physics, such as the standard cosmological model and the statistical mechanics in the expanding Universe, before discussing the history of neutrinos in chronological order from the very early stages until today. This timely book will interest graduate students and researchers in astrophysics, cosmology and particle physics, who work with either a theoretical or experimental focus.

Our Universe is made of a dozen fundamental building blocks. Among these, neutrinos are the most mysterious - but they are the second most abundant particles in the Universe. This book provides detailed discussions of how to describe neutrinos, their basic properties, and the roles they play in nature.