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1. Robert McNees (mcnees@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 25-Jan-2023 22:57:35 UTC Robert McNees

   Over the course of your life, something on the order of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 neutrinos will glide right through your body like little ghosts.

   There’s maybe a 1 in 3 chance that, out of all of them, one will interact with an atom in your body.

   If it does, you won’t notice.

   • Adrian Segar ✅ (asegar@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 25-Jan-2023 23:23:17 UTC Adrian Segar ✅

     in reply to

     @mcnees Long ago I worked on the Gargamelle neutral currents experiment at CERN where every 30 seconds we sent hundreds of millions of high-energy neutrinos through 18 tons of freon in a bubble chamber the size of a house. We ran this for several years.

     About one of those neutrinos interacted with the compressed liquid freon; the rest continued into space at ~ the speed of light.

     Though the risk was small, we didn't stand in _that_ beam.

     More here: https://cerncourier.com/a/the-discovery-of-the-weak-neutral-currents/

   • The Geoff (_thegeoff@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 26-Jan-2023 11:51:45 UTC The Geoff

     in reply to

     @mcnees I seem to remember somebody calculated that there was a small chance of a single person observing a flash from an eyeball-neutrino interaction during a supernova in the 1980s?

   • Peter Denton (jazzwhiz@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 26-Jan-2023 16:26:54 UTC Peter Denton

     in reply to

     @mcnees This is a great fact, of course. But I always like to provide other particles for context. For example, every single photon in the visible that is pointed at your body will interact with you. Muons usually do. And so on.