Cosmic Gall, by John Updike

Every second, hundreds of billions of these neutrinos pass through each square inch of our bodies, coming from above during the day and from below at night, when the sun is shining on the other side of the earth!       From "An Explanatory Statement on Elementary Particle Physics" by M.A. Ruderman and A.H. Rosenfeld, in American Scientist.

Neutrinos, they are very small.
     They have no charge and have no mass
And do not interact at all.
The earth is just a silly ball
     To them, through which they simply pass,
Like dustmaids down a drafty hall
     Or photons through a sheet of glass.
     They snub the most exquisite gas,
Ignore the most substantial wall,
     Cold-shoulder steel and sounding brass,
Insult the stallion in his stall,
     And, scoring barriers of class,
Infiltrate you and me!  Like tall
And painless guillotines, they fall
     Down through our heads into the grass.
At night, they enter at Nepal
     And pierce the lover and his lass
From underneath the bed -- you call
     It wonderful: I call it crass.

(Source: Verse & Universe: Poems about Science and Mathematics, Edited by Kurt Brown, 1998.)


Do you agree that neutrinos are crass?

I am intrigued by neutrinos.  I was just watching a series on the History Channel called The Universe (www.history.com/universe).  The show, "Magnetic Storm," was about magnetic fields in and around the sun & earth, and in atoms.  At one point, the commentator was using a fan as a way to illustrate how magnetism, or the electromagnetic force, is necessary to keep electrons spinning around an atom (much like the earth spins around the sun).  Without that magnetic force, the electrons would stop spinning, and solid things would no longer be solid.  We would fall through floors or walk through walls (just like a neutrino!).  So to illustrate that concept, the commentator showed that when the fan was not spinning, he could throw a small ball between the blades (that's like no magnetic force, when the electrons stop spinning).  But when he turned the fan on, and the blades were spinning, he was NOT able to throw a small ball through the blades.

So I am wondering: can neutrinos pass through anything because they are not affected by magnetic forces?  Or is it just because they are so small?  And what about friction?  I mean, do they ever stop?  And is their movement random?  I like to think that nothing in the world or universe is random.  Chaos theory sounds random, but actually shows that there is a beautiful order within what appears to be a chaotic system.  One way to see the beauty within chaos is by looking at fractals -- and snowflakes.  Isn't it amazing that every single snowflake is unique?  I think that is amazing and awe-inspiring and life-affirming, and so beautiful that it makes me want to sing! (Beautiful, by Christina Aguilera)  I think that every being in the universe is unique and special, that we are all loved by God, and that our reason for being here is to learn, grow, and live in LOVE.

Related Film:
"Powers of Ten," by Charles & Ray Eames (1968), available on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SpGu3LSEOw
This film travels away from Earth, at successive orders of magnitude, up into the universe, and then travels back again, going inside a body, to the subatomic universe of protons and neutrons, which are in the nucleus, or center, of an atom.

By the way, the show "Magnetic Storm" also explained more about auroras.  I will post more about that later....