Space Oddities

Starred review from January 29, 2024
This superb study by University of Cambridge particle physicist Cliff (How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch) examines contemporary physics’ most intriguing mysteries through profiles of the scientists trying to solve them. Cliff details Italian physicist Linda Cremonesi’s contributions to an Antarctic data collection project that in 2016 discovered unexpected cosmic rays (“charged particles like protons and nuclei”) that appeared to travel upward from the ice, a finding some physicists speculate might result from a subatomic sterile neutrino particle, which can normally pass through matter, losing that ability while moving through the Earth and colliding with the ice on its way out. Cliff also examines Nobel Prize–winner Adam Riess’s ongoing research attempting to resolve why direct and indirect measurements of how fast the universe is expanding don’t match up, and physicist Chris Polly’s efforts to determine whether the unusual magnetic properties of the muon (“an exotic, heavier cousin of the more familiar electron”) are evidence of a quantum field that has yet to discovered. Cliff’s lucid explanations do a remarkable job of making the complicated physics accessible and even exciting, and the focus on the scientists’ stories ensconces the heady ideas in approachable, human narratives. This is a first-rate dispatch from the cutting edge of physics. Agent: Dorian Karchmar, WME.