Abstract

The neutrino is the massless and electrically neutral weak-interaction partner of the electron, always traveling at the speed of light and rarely interacting with anything. The sun makes lots of neutrinos. About 61,000,000,000 neutrinos per second from the sun pass through each square centimeter of cross section on the surface of the Earth. If your body presents an area to the sun of 10,000 square centimeters, this means that 610 trillion neutrinos are passing right through your body in the second it takes to read this line. But you don't notice this; neutrinos can pass through light years of lead without impediment. They pass through your body and through the Earth as if neither was there. As you might imagine, this makes the detection of neutrinos very difficult ... but not impossible