Physics Science

This outstanding book reports on how cutting edge experimental physics is testing theories about dark energy, dark matter, inflation after the Big Bang, evidence of the Bang itself, multiverses, and the Higgs boson, to name a few. The author has trekked the globe to observe the various telescopes and particle colliders putting to the test the cosmological and quantum theories presently in vogue. Will string theory be verified? Will the graviton be found? Will better evidence confirm whether our universe’s geometry is flat, saddle-shaped, or spherical?

To potentially answer such queries, The Edge of Physics: A Journey to Earth’s Extremes to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe takes us first to Mount Wilson in California where “[t]he observatory [George] Hale built is called the birthplace of modern observational cosmology.” Next, the author, journalist Anil Ananthaswamy, descends into the bowels of the Soudan Mine in Minnesota which now “hosts one of cosmology’s most sensitive experiments: the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS).” Among the other sites he visits are the Siberian neutrino telescope at Lake Baikal, another neutrino array telescope at the South Pole, an antimatter balloon experiment in Antarctica, and the European CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Still another project isn’t lashed to earth somewhere but has been sent out 900,000 miles into space. It’s “the Planck satellite, the latest in a small but select group of pathbreaking space probes designed to map the cosmic microwave background.” It was launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) in May, 2009. Of course, its scientists remain earthbound to monitor and analyze its anticipated wealth of relayed information.

Ananthaswamy skillfully integrates technical engineering details, clear background about the theories that might be verified and the human element. He interviews many of the people who brave often harsh, unforgiving climates and geography to build, operate, and interpret the minutely sensitive and calibrated instruments and their collected data.

In the epilogue Ananthaswamy journeys to Mount Saraswati in Tibet where the new Hanle Observatory is part of “an international collaboration called COSMOGRAIL (for COSmological MOnitoring of GRAvItational Lenses).” He notes there “I became aware of the deep silence enveloping me….It is abundantly clear, standing in Hanle, as it had been in places like the South Pole, Lake Baikal, Paranal, and the Karoo, that the natural calm of these places is what makes them ideal to cosmology. We need to protect them…. If we pollute them, we will destroy our best chance of deciphering our own beginnings, of understanding ourselves.” Finding suitably remote, unspoiled locations on earth constantly becomes more difficult, but as THE EDGE OF PHYSICS so compellingly relates, we can still learn a great deal from telescopes and other instruments deployed here if we don’t despoil the remaining wilds where they can be maximally effective.

This is a superb resource for anyone who eager learn about the current state of experimental physics, the technology required to carry out the research, the geography that best sustains various projects, the theories being tested, and the men and women who are on the front lines constantly evaluating, innovating, and stretching the boundaries of our knowledge about the cosmos.
Rating: 5 / 5

For years, physicists have been trying to unify the four (known) fundamental forces of nature: gravity, strong nuclear, weak nuclear and electromagnetic. In this book, the author attempts to tie together work being done in ten different locations across six continents, each of which may provide a piece to the puzzle. Dark matter/energy, the multiverse, string theory and other topics make an appearance; if your goal is to get a deep understanding of any of them, this is not the book for you. However, if the story behind the science, coupled with a history and sense of place plus a gentle introduction to physics involved is your goal, then this is the book you’re looking for.

In each chapter, the author details:

- why a particular location was chosen e.g. very little radiation/cosmic rays reach the depth of the Soudan Mine.

- how the instruments at each location are constructed e.g. “drilling” holes at the South Pole with hot water

- what the instruments are doing e.g. detecting neutrinos coming from the center of our galaxy

- why the experiments are important e.g. trying to determine whether our universe is flat or has a negative/positive curvature

In addition, he provides a window into the extraordinary lives of the people building the instruments/running the experiments/analysing the results, people who have devoted years of their lives and/or endure extreme conditions in the pursuit of science. He also sprinkles a number of non-scientific stories and facts about the locations themselves (Lake Baikal has a surprise at the bottom of it courtesy of the Russo-Japanese War) into the mix.

While the chapters can feel a bit long winded and repetitive at times, the book as a whole provides an engaging, enlightening read, a great springboard, should you desire, from which to explore the science, the places and/or the history in more depth.
Rating: 4 / 5

THE EDGE OF PHYSICS by Anil Ananthaswamy is 300 pages long, with ten illustrations. The author is a journalist, and hence the book is part travelogue and part layperson’s guide to science. The travelogue takes us deep into an abandoned iron mine in Minnesota, to a dry desert high in the Andes Mountains called Cerro Paranal, to a remote lake in Russia (world’s deepest lake) called Lake Baikal, to Antarctica, to the top of the worlds tallest mountain (measuring from its base, not measuring from ground level) in Hawaii, and elsewhere.

The book provides insights into various advances in physics, at a level similar to that found on the science page of a typical big-city newspaper, e.g., New York Times. We learn some of the early history of cosmology. For example, George Hale, former head of an observatory at Lake Geneva, WI, helped set up the observatory at Mount Wilson, CA, which included two daytime telescopes and two nighttime telescopes. We learn about spectrographs and about Fraunhofer lines, which are used to identify elements existing in stars, and we learn about red shifts and blue shifts (page 14). We learn that Vesto Slipher (don’t blame me, I didn’t name him) discovered that galaxies move away from us at a great rate, e.g., 1,100 km/sec. We learn the advantages of reflector telescopes over refractor telescopes (page 18). We learn about Henrietta Leavitts discovery of Cepheid variables, and of her new method for calculating brightness of stars (p. 22), and about Hubble’s famous 6-page paper from 1929, disclosing that the velocity of a galaxy is proportional to its distance from earth.

We learn about Fritz Zwickys observation regarding the relation between galaxy speed and galaxy mass, his conclusion that there was an apparent missing mass, which eventually led to the discovery of dark matter. (p. 30). Three types of evidence for dark matter are described, deriving from (1) Velocity; (2) Temperature; and (3) Gravitational lensing. We also learn about the experiment in the iron mine used to detect one kind of dark matter, called Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMP) (p. 31-55). Unfortunately, as of the publication date of the book, this experiment failed to detect any WIMPs.

Neutrinos are disclosed on pages 56-80. We learn of 228 detectors in Lake Baikal, all submerged in the lake, and facing downwards for detecting neutrinos that have passed through the entire planet earth. The goal was to reduce background noise from muons. We learn that there are three types of neutrinos, electron neutrinos, tau neutrinos, and muon neutrinos. Neutrinos are produced by the sun, as well when dark-matter particles collide with each other (p. 60).

Then, we learn about the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in the Andes, which was used to gather light from stars that exploded with the universe was half as old as it is today. A goal of this work was to study dark energy (p. 81-108).

At times, the reader encounters gobs of narratives not having much to do with science. For example, pages 25-30 disclose sleeping quarters, lunches, birds, and gardens, at the observatory on Mount Wilson.

A fascinating story of fund-raising involves the Keck Observatory on the Big Island of Hawaii. A problem was that Marion Hoffman wanted to donate $36 million, but she died before signing any papers. Originally, Howard Keck wanted to donate half the needed money, but when the Hoffman Foundation reneged, Keck decided to fund the entire effort. The advantage of the Keck Observatory telescopes, was their improved ability to measure velocity of galaxys, thus enabling better calculations on dark matter (p. 109-134).

Criticisms. A criticism is that ink-pen diagrams would have been helpful to understand some of the equipment, for example, the difference between reflector and refractor telescopes (page 17). Also, the book should have done a better job at distinguishing “muon neutrinos” from “muons.” It is not made clear if these are the same things, or different things. The book serves as a fine inspiration for delving into more detailed layperson’s books on cosmology. The book was, for me, a pleasant diversion just like Time Magazine. After reading this book, I did the same thing with it that most people do with Time Magazine, after reading an issue of Time Magazine.
Rating: 5 / 5