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Sit
quietly, and count off 10 seconds to yourself. Roughly 200
trillion neutrinos from the sun, from cosmic rays, and from
distant supernovas have just passed through you, but you'd
never know it. Neutrinos are the ghostliest of subatomic particles.
They have no electrical charge, so they're not subject to
electromagnetic forces. They're immune to the strong nuclear
force, which binds atomic nuclei together. In fact, you could
shoot your average neutrino through a light-year's worth of
lead bricks before anything would happen to it. These few
interactions are a result of the weak nuclear forceÜa wimpy
excuse for a fundamental force that causes neutrons to turn
into protons via a process called beta decay, and whose effective
range is less than the diameter of the decaying neutron. And
until recently, everybody thought neutrinos were massless,
like photons of light.
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