Inside front cover

FRONT COVER

This peaceful beach-side scene is torn by nuclear activity. A nuclear detector snapshot in a fraction of a picosecond couldreveal a host of sub-atomic particles darting in all directions, asshown by the streaks in this depiction.There are energetic cosmic rays raining down from space, havingtravelled for aeons of time from their little known origin. Whenthey hit the upper atmosphere they create a shower of particlesfrom the atoms they rip apart.Because the earth and sea contain radioactive elements such asuranium and thorium, they too contribute to the deluge of radiation, mainly in the form of gamma rays.Living creatures, like the cyclist riding down the hill, also maketheir contribution from radioactive potassium and carbon withintheir bodies.But that's not all. The snapshot doesn't include the tiny neutrinos from the sun and stars. If they were depicted the scene would be only a white blur - there are so many of them. So many,in fact, that several billion pass right through every cubiccentimetre of your body and mine every second, totally withoutour knowledge. They do so because their interaction with matteris so slight that practically all of them pass right through theearth itself without being absorbed. We might as well admit it. We live submerged in an ocean of nuclear radiation which does us little harm. On the contrary,evidence is accumulating that it is healthy!