Neutrinos are weird. They might be their own anti-particles! That's weird. Jayawardhana told me stuff about neutrinos at the exact right level. He explained the theories while skipping the math, and told a good story. ( )

Neutrinos are tiny subatomic particles with the notable property of being extremely unlikely to interact with other forms of matter. Indeed, trillions of them are passing through your body right now and having absolutely no effect on you at all.

But with sufficient ingenuity (and huge quantities of dry-cleaning fluid), it can be possible to detect these elusive particles in the rare instances when they do have an effect. So we know that they do exist. And their existence is important in a surprising number of ways. Learning about neutrinos tells us interesting things about how physics works, about what happens in the centers of stars, and even about the universe on a cosmic scale. Without them, we wouldn't even be here.

I already knew most of the science Jayawardhana covers here, since I was a physics major in college. Although he does talk about some interesting things that can be done with neutrinos, such as studying the interior of the Earth, which were new to me and rather fascinating. Anyway, since I already knew a lot of this stuff, I'm probably not the best person to judge whether he's talking about it in a way that makes sense to the layperson. But, while I have one or two small quibbles about how he puts certain things, it seems to me that he generally does a good job of being scientifically accurate without being overwhelmingly technical. And he breaks up the physics with little human-interest details about the scientists involved in making the discoveries he's describing. I've often seen popular science books taking this approach, and it frequently seems awkward or forced, or as if the author is trying to turn science into some kind of dramatic soap opera. But Jayawardhana manages to do it in a way that feels very smooth and natural and interesting.

So for me, at least, it was a very readable book, and I certainly feel a new sense of appreciation for neutrinos and the people who hunt them. I'm also impressed, after looking back at the history of our understanding of neutrinos, with the realization that less than a hundred years ago not only did we have no idea what a neutrino was, but the only particles we did know about were the proton and the electron. It's a bit dazzling to look back and realize just how far we've come in our understanding of the underlying nature of reality in such a very short amount of time. ( )

This book is a great popular science introduction to the topic of neutrinos, written with the general public in mind, clearly written, with more terms and concepts explained than one might see in books written for a professional physics audience, but not watered down or oversimplified. If only my undergrad physics courses had been this informative and interesting, I might have finished a physics degree after all. I did feel motivated after reading this book to participate in a citizen science project, helping hunt for supernovas (since those are neutrino sources and I liked the idea of being able to watch the neutrino signature of a supernova). ( )

Easily readable and not too long account of the physics of neutrinos. Continuing research on these elusive leptons, now known to be not quite massless and to oscillate among their three flavors, may force revision of the Standard Model and even give rise to applications in geology and nuclear monitoring. Lots about the people involved and their heroic detection experiments.