Solar Neutrino by Dmitry Naumov in top ten popular science books for children
News, 08 April 2024
On 7 April, the Non/fictio№ Spring 2024 International Intellectual Literature Festival in Moscow hosted the presentation of The Solar Neutrino book by Deputy Director for Scientific Work at the Laboratory of Nuclear Problems at JINR, Head of the JINR Neutrino Programme, Doctor of Physics and Mathematics Dmitry Naumov. The book entered the top list of the fair in the category “Ten best educational children’s books by Russian authors”.
The 96-page encyclopaedia for middle schoolers tells the story of one of the most elusive particles in the universe, neutrinos. Trillions of these tiny particles pass through the human body every second, without us noticing. Most of the neutrinos are solar, meaning they are produced as a result of nuclear reactions in the depth of the Sun. Studying neutrinos will help scientists answer many questions about the physical processes that took place in our universe long before humans appeared.
The author explains to young readers:
- How did the Sun and the Solar System appear?
- What is a neutrino and how did scientists learn to catch it?
- Why have researchers been struggling to unveil the mystery of neutrino for 40 years?
- Why would life on Earth be impossible without this particle?
Inside the book are stories about how significant physics discoveries were made.
The Solar Neutrino was included in the Avanta+ publishing house’s Big Science for Children series of the latest popular science educational books for children and teenagers written by renowned researchers and popularisers of science. For Dmitry Naumov, this was the first experience of writing a book for a children’s audience.
Dmitry V. Naumov is Deputy Director for Scientific Work of the Laboratory of Nuclear Problems at JINR and Head of the JINR Neutrino Programme. He is a participant of the Baikal-GVD, JUNO, Daya Bay, OPERA, NOMAD, EUSO/JEM-EUSO International Projects. He published about 200 scientific papers with high citation rate. He is a reviewer of scientific journals and a scientific supervisor of Bachelors, Masters, and Candidates of Sciences. As a professor, he has more than 20 years of experience in giving series of lectures on quantum field theory, neutrino physics, and related disciplines at the Moscow State University and during scientific schools. Dmitry Naumov is the author of a textbook entitled “Quantum field theory for experimenters (and not just them)”. The researcher is actively engaged in the popularisation of scientific knowledge. Thus, among other things, he reads lectures and creates video content. He is a winner of The Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics: 2016 and the European Physical Society Prize: 2023 (as part of the Daya Bay Collaboration), JINR Prizes, etc.