Math Is Fun Forum

Jai Ganesh

Administrator

Registered: 2005-06-28

Posts: 46,190

Neutrinos

I had read somewhere sometime back that a neutrino can penetrate 100 light years of lead. Is this true? And if it is, isn't it a remarkable property which the sub-atomic particle has?

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It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils. - Niels Henrik Abel.

Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge - Stephen William Hawking.

Ricky

Moderator

Registered: 2005-12-04

Posts: 3,791

Re: Neutrinos

By the time you finish reading this sentence, over 50 trillion neutrinos have passed through your body.

It isn't all that remarkable.  Atoms are mostly space, and neutrinos are not only chargeless, but nearly massless as well.  The result is quite logical that they would be able to pass through just about anything.

And the 100 light years sounds like a very rough calculation, more like a guesstimate.  But I haven't looked into it at all.

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"In the real world, this would be a problem.  But in mathematics, we can just define a place where this problem doesn't exist.  So we'll go ahead and do that now..."