What are neutrinos?

135 views

What do they do? Are they just floating around?

In: 6

3 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

You know how electrons are much smaller than protons and have a negative charge?

Neutrinos are even small than electrons (less mass), but they have no charge.

Those two facts make them very difficult to study. Since they have no charge, they don’t affect protons and electrons through electricity of magnetism. In fact, they go right through normal matter *better* than light goes through glass. They have almost no mass so gravity barely affects them and they always travel (almost) the speed of light. They have so little mass that for a long time we though they had no mass at all.

They do occasionally react in unusual ways meaning if you have a big enough thing (like an iceberg or the whole planet) you can detect them, but even so you will miss most of them.

What do they do? Mostly they just float around going in straight lines without caring what is there. They are important for a couple reasons. First, they are made in many nuclear reactions. If they aren’t made, the math doesn’t let the nuclear reactions happen. Second, they cause the outward explosion in supernovas. They have so little mass that they can escape collapsing stars. That is really important because something has to push some of the matter out. We, and everything else on our planet, are made of the stuff pushed out of exploding stars by neutrinos.

You are viewing 1 out of 3 answers, click here to view all answers.