An invoice for a hole in the desert, a matchbox full of neutrinos, and other rediscovered artifacts from the hunt for the ghost particle

A recently uncovered cache of materials that neutrino pioneers Clyde Cowan and Fred Reines collected includes a variety of artifacts that haven’t been seen in over a half century. Notes, images, and invoices offer an intimate glimpse into the efforts that led to first direct detection of neutrinos. The items illuminate key moments in the early history of the hunt for the ghostly particle that Wolfgang Pauli initially proposed as an effectively undetectable entity to explain the seemingly inscrutable spectrum of energy in beta decay experiments. I will present a selection of the rediscovered materials that we relied on in writing a new book about the elusive neutrino.*

*A. Chodos and J. Riordon, Ghost Particle: In Search of the Elusive and Mysterious Neutrino, Cambridge, Massachusetts, MIT Press, 2023