The Ghost Particle

PRODUCT DETAILS

These particles, called neutrinos, are essential for the sun to shine and for the earth’s elements to form. Truly a poltergeist among particles - neutrinos have no electric charge, so they are invisible to all normal scientific equipment. But physicists John Bahcall and Ray Davis took on the seemingly impossible quest of hunting down the elusive particles. They searched for the neutrinos in a gold mine in South Dakota using a giant vat of cleaning fluid. But no matter how many times they tried, their results would not match their predictions. Against the odds and in the face of their colleagues’ disbelief, Bahcall and David persevered. Finally, the clue they needed came from detective work at the world’s deepest nickel mine in northern Canada and a giant tank of ultra-pure water inside a Japanese mountain. And their ultimate conclusion about the true nature of the ghost particles would prove even more bizarre than anyone had suspected. 56 minutes. Grade 7 and up.