Splinters of Infinity: Cosmic Rays and the Clash of Two Nobel Prize–Winning Scientists over the Secrets of Creation

“Originally, I had the idea of doing a book on cosmic rays in general, and the history of cosmic ray research, which is a big subject. It’s been going on for over a century and is still ongoing. But I realized that was going to be a huge project that was going to take a long time. Then the pandemic hit, and everything closed down. I thought, ‘Well, if I’m going to do this, I need to scale it down somewhat.’ And the conflict between Robert Millikan (1868–1953) and Arthur Compton (1892–1962) turned out to be the perfect way into the subject…They’re particles that are always coming in from all different directions and are passing through your body right now. They’re very high energy, but most of the time they don’t do anything. Once in a while they’ll flip a byte inside a chip in your computer, causing glitches. But that’s rare. We still don’t know exactly where they all come from. Which is another thing that drew me to this subject because after all this time, it’s still a mystery.” Read more...

The best books on The History of Physics

Mark Wolverton, Science Writer