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Blinded By The Light: New Theories About the Sun and the Search for Dark Matter
Blinded By The Light New Theories About the Sun and the Search for Dark Matter Author:John Gribbin For thousands of years, the sun has been extravagant with its heat, but its blinding light has kept hidden the secrets of its inner workings. Now all that is changing, and scientists have been uncovering the structure of our nearest star at an astonishing pace, offering revelations about stellar dynamics, exotic new particles, and even the ultim... more »ate fate of our universe. 'Blinded by the Light' tells the story of these exciting discoveries.
In the lucid and lively style that has made him one of today's most successful science writers, John Gribben explores many of the latest findings in solar research: "starquakes" that rock the sun and reveal as much about its interior as earthquakes do about the earth: and new evidence that the sun actually pulsates in a cyclic pattern, which may account for large-scale climactic fluctuations on our planet.
Most exciting of all, perhaps, is the sun's role in the search for the missing "cold dark matter" in the universe. This dark matter would provide the gravitational mass that astrophysicists believe is needed to keep the universe from expanding forever. Gribben shows how cutting-edge research into the sun's nuclear furnace is fueling the hot debate over what might account for the missing mass: Is it neutrinos, long thought the most likely candidate, or WIMPs, the exotic and recently predicted massive particles that have never before been detected? The answer to this question-and its implications for the fate of the universe-may be as close as the heart of our own sun.« less
ISBN-13: 9780517578278 ISBN-10: 0517578271 Publication Date: 10/8/1991 Pages:240 Edition:1st American ed Rating: