Review: Particle Physics, A very short introduction (Frank Close)

It's pretty decent. I definitely learned a lot of quarks and squarks and other strange entities!

Particle Physics - A Very Short Introduction

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The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) is 2070 metres below ground in a nickel mine in Sudbury, Ontario. Its heart is an acrylic vessel filled with 1,000 tonnes of ‘heavy water’, called deuterium, in which a neutron joins the single proton of ordinary hydrogen. In SNO, electron-neutrinos interact with the neutrons in the deuterium to create protons and electrons, and the fast-moving electrons emit cones of Cerenkov radiation as they travel through the heavy water. The Cerenkov light forms patterns of rings on the inner surface of the water tank, where it is picked up by thousands of phototubes arrayed around the walls.

Thats not right. Deuterium is not heavy water. But heavy water usually contains deuterium. At least, if one is using “heavy water” as any water molecule heavier than normal, that is, which contains either deuterium or tritium or a higher isotope of oxygen (17 or 18). See also Wikipedia on heavy water. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water#Other_heavy_forms_of_water

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This is the first fortunate circumstance. Humans are the pinnacle of evolution and it has taken almost all of those 5 billion years for us to emerge. Had the Sun burned faster, it would have died before we arrived.

Biologists hate such talk. Assuming that life only started once on Earth, then every single nonextinct lifeform is evolved to the same degree. At least, if that is what one means by having used the same time evolving since the first life.

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