What a fantastic book! Join Anil Ananthaswamy on his pilgrimage around the world to visit as many of the most famous, and unusual, Observatories that he can get to. In his 2010 book “The Edge of Physics” Ananthaswamy shares his experiences on this global journey. Along the way he interviewed some of the top minds in astronomy and theoretical physics, seeking answers to many of the most pressing questions in modern science: Is Supersymmetry a valid theory? Is there actually a Higgs Boson?* And the hunt for Cosmological Neutrinos and the Neutralinos. As a layman-reader I really enjoyed this book although there were portions of the text that left me feeling somewhat overwhelmed by the complex theories of particle physics and the mysteries of cosmological history. But Ananthaswamy is very good at explaining these difficult concepts, his writing is layman friendly and very readable. Part travel log, part history and cutting edge science, this entertaining book left me hungry for more of the same. Starting out in California, USA, the author visits the Mt. Wilson Observatory and takes a side trip to visit a Camaldolese Monastery in the Santa Lucia Mountains to spend some time with one of the resident Monks and experience some really dark skies. From there he continued on to more exotic locations; the VLT at Cerro Paranal Observatory in Chile’s Atacama Desert; the Karoo region of So. Africa, possibly the future home of the SKA (Square Kilometer Array)— the other contender is in Australia; the controversial observatories atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii and with IceCube in Antarctica drilling for the Square Kilometer Neutrino Detector. The list goes on but, for me, the high point was his visit to CERN in Geneva, Switzerland to see ATLAS: the huge particle detector for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). While touring each facility the author discussed the ultimate goals of the scientists and engineers work and live there. And what are those goals? High on everybody’s list was a theory that combines General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics but they would also like to confirm Supersymmetry, look for validation to String Theory and the Multiverse. Ananthaswamy’s description of CERN and ATLAS is breathtaking. Working and doing research at CERN is definitely not for the faint of heart. With the dawning of the Space Age it wasn’t long before new observatories were being sent to “The Final Frontier” in the form of satellites like Hubble and Planck that can “park” at one of the Lagrangian Points to make their observations. And so the book closes with a look to the future when a new generation of scientists, and their tools, will be rewriting the composition and history of our universe. I thoroughly enjoyed this challenging book and I highly recommend it to anyone interested reading about space, time and the universe. I had no technical or downloading problems with this Kindle edition.
(* Higgs Boson was Discovered at CERN in 2012)
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