The Edge of Physics: A Journey to Earth's Extremes to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe, by Anil Ananthaswamy

Doing astronomy at remote places to get the best view of the cosmos

Gigantic telescopes with high resolutions are necessary to get a good view of the heavens, but we also need an unimpeded look with a clear sky, free from clouds, wind, and dry atmosphere 365 days a year. Such an environment helps us gather images of galaxies billions of light-years away that would answer many fundamental questions of astronomy and physics. Hence large telescopes are built at places like Atacama Desert in Chile at Paranal Observatory. The author provides his personal experiences of visiting these places and reporting the experiments conducted there. Other places of interests include an abandoned iron mine in Minnesota, where experiments are conducted to study dark matter particles. In Antarctica, 1.5 miles into the icy ground, efforts are underway for the detection fundamentals particles like neutrino. Lake Baikal in Siberia, the world’s oldest and deepest lake is also a hotspot for detecting neutrinos, and the Indian Astronomical Observatory in the Himalayas to study galaxies with optical, infrared, and gamma-ray telescopes. This book is not so much about the experiments or astronomy research, but it is about the experience of visiting these places.