The Case of the Missing Neutrinos: And Other Curious Phenomena of the Universe

by John Gribbin

Is it true that the Sun is shrinking at such a rate that our Earth will disappear within a hundred thousand years? What happened to the Sun's neutrinos to make them disappear on their way to the Earth? Why does the fact that the sky is dark at night prove that our universe is changing and hasn't always been the way it is? What are the chances that, if ever we make contact with intelligent beings who evolved under conditions similar to those on Earth, they too will be upright, bipedal with two arms ending in five-fingered hands, with a head on top containing a pair of eyes, a nose, and a mouth?Questions like these are posed - and often answered - in this delightful excursion through the Universe with John Gribbin, the noted award-winning astronomer and science writer. Here he explores the topics of his passionate expertise - often some of the more outlandish aspects of astronomy frequently shunned in the sober pages of scientific journals - including supernova explosions. neutron stars, white holes, black holes, wormholes, and inflation. "The Case of the Missing Neutrinos" is very much a personal account of twenty years of watching the Universe by a man with a rare knack for turning complex science into plain, everyday language.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Physics

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

John R. Gribbin is a British science writer, an astrophysicist, and a visiting fellow in astronomy at the University of Sussex. His writings include quantum physics, human evolution, climate change, global warming, the origins of the universe, and biographies of famous scientists. He also writes science fiction.

Reviews

[James E. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book several years ago and enjoyed it very much. If you like "The Bathroom Reader" series of books, you should like this; enough detail to give you a decent understanding of the topic, but not so deep that you feel overwhelmed. Also, a great book for the bathroom.

[Violet · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was written in 1997 so was ridiculously out of date. It was actually comical at times how wrong it was. Despite being a science non-fiction book some of it read like a sci-fi as it was so convinced that utterly wrong ideas were what is going to happen. All that white-hole and wormhole crap, come one dude, do better. I know I know, it's 30 decades old but there were no quantifiers that any of this was unproven or just a little side theory that two people are convinced by. Anything that was not out of date and is currently accepted knowledge was explained below my level of understanding so those parts were a bit dull. All in all it was either wildly incorrect or correct and woefully simplified. Thus it took me almost a year to get through this.

[Waven · Rating 4 out of 5]

While much of the information in the pages of this book has become commonplace or obsolete, it's still a fun read, very accessible with a lot of good history, and not a bad measure of how quickly our scientific understanding changes. I first picked it up in the late 1990s, when some of his subjects were still new, and found it a very enjoyable book. It's still enjoyable and interesting, not a bad primer, but not a good source for up-to-date information, either.