They are everywhere, racing through the world at the speed of light and penetrating virtually everything in their path. We’re talking about neutrinos, which have been challenging physics for a long time. “The Strangest Particle in the World” is the title of the book by Christian Spiering, a scientist who has dedicated himself entirely to researching neutrinos.
They exist in three variants plus the respective antiparticles, arise as by-products of atomic processes, for example in the interior of stars, and are difficult to detect. This requires special telescopes such as IceCube, which uses the thick layer of ice at the South Pole as a huge detector medium.
Just as exciting as the bizarre properties of neutrinos is their history, which began a century ago. The physicist Wolfgang Pauli postulated a particle that should contain the missing energy in the so-called beta decay. Frederick Reines demonstrated this fleeting nothingness in an experiment on a nuclear reactor in 1956. It’s not just Pauli and Reines who play a role in the book. The author also tells about the lives of four other researchers and one female researcher (Lise Meitner). Seasoned with anecdotes, the biographical highlights are lively and entertaining to read. Spiering puts people at the center, avoids heavy physical fare and thus makes his topic digestible for a broad audience. Helmut Hornung
Christian Spiering
The strangest particle in the world
Hanser Verlag, 332 pages, € 28,–
ISBN 978–3–446–28465–4