The fascinating story of science in pursuit of the ghostly, ubiquitous subatomic particle—the neutrino.
Isaac Asimov once 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.
Author(s): Alan Chodos, James Riordon
Edition: 1
Publisher: The MIT Press
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 320
City: Cambridge, Massachusetts
Tags: Neutrinos; Neutrino astrophysics; Ghost Particle
Contents
Foreword
Preface
Portrait of a Ghost
1: Neutrino Enigma
2: A Desperate Proposal
Conservation Revolution and Crisis
Correspondence Principle Breakdown
Pauli’s Desperate Remedy
Ghost Hunting
3: Project Poltergeist
To See a Ghost
Pursuit of the Poltergeist
El Monstro
Killing the Monster
From Herr Auge to the Club Sandwich
The Race Is On
Enough Fun at Los Alamos
4: Adrift in a Particle Sea
Draining the Dirac Sea
The Mysterious Disappearance of Ettore Majorana
Case Closed
5: Turn On the Sun
Going Underground to Study the Sun
The Mystery Deepens
Mystery Solved
6: The Incredible Flavor Changer
The Flavor-Mass Connection
Speeding Oscillation in the Sun
Neutrino Mass Hierarchy
Flavor Confusion
An End to Oscillations
7: Shadows in the Particle Garden
Particle Exchange Games
Shaping up in Spin Class
Antimatter
Helicity and Handedness
Beta Decay and the Weak Force
Making Mass
The Beauty in Symmetry
Neutrino Mass Troubles
The Modeler’s Privilege
8: Cosmic Connections
Weighing Neutrinos with the Cosmic Microwave Background
Neutrinos and the Mystery of Matter in the Universe
Sakharov’s Solution
9: Lifting a Veil on the Universe
Supernova Early Warning System
A New SNEWS
Seeing the Sky in Neutrinos
IceCube’s Neutrino Name Game
Underground Observatories
Radio Emission Neutrino Detectors
Studying the Sun
Messengers from beyond the Galaxy
Big Bang Relics
From Detector to Observatory
10: Made-to-Order Neutrinos
Forging Neutrino Beams
Neutrino Factories
Serving up Reactor Neutrinos
Homecooked Neutrinos
11: A Coherent Tale
Coherent Scattering for Real
Lucky CEνNS
What Can CEνNS See?
In Search of Sterile Neutrinos with CEνNS
More for CEνNS Soon
12: Infinity through a Keyhole
KATRIN
Project 8
Beta Decay in Reverse
Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay
The Monumental Quest to Find Nothing
13: Into the Unknown
Faster than a Speeding Photon
The Search for a Special Place in the Universe
Portal to the Dark Sector
Cracks in the Cottage
14: What Can You Do with a Neutrino?
Nuclear Security
Probing the Planet
Earth Engine Diagnostics
Spin-Offs
More Promise than Purpose, for Now
15: On the Fringes and over
the Edge
Ultra-High-Speed Global Communications
The Search for Aliens in Space
Catching Cosmic Engineers at Work
Improbable, but Maybe not Impossible
16: More to Come for Little
Neutral One
Acknowledgments
Appendix
A.1 The Discovery That Nature Distinguishes Left from Right
A.2 The Higgs Mechanism
A.3 An Inside Look at Supernovas
Glossary
Notes
Portrait of a Ghost
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Further Reading
Index
