Is there any effect of neutrinos when they pass through our body?
Bhanu Jamwal, Jandial, Jammu and Kashmir.
No. Every minute billions of neutrinos must be passing through our body but we do not get affected by them. Neutrino is an electrically neutral elementary particle with half-integer spin. Neutrinos have mass but tiny even compared to other subatomic particles and they constitute the only identified matter associated with hot dark matter. They do not carry any electrical charge and hence are not affected by electromagnetic radiation and they are leptons so do not get affected by strong forces and not even by the subatomic forces in the nucleus. They typically pass through normal matter unimpeded and undetected just like light travels through transparent material. The neutrinos in our vicinity are mainly due to the nuclear reactions occurring in the Sun. Stellar phenomena such as big bang, supernovae, production of cosmic radiation result in the production of neutrinos in abundance.
Since their mass is negligible and they are uncharged, neutrinos do not cause any ionizing radiation and do not produce any changes in our bodies. Neutrinos are used conveniently in probing the environment wherein other radiations such as light, radio waves can not penetrate , in detecting Sun's core conditions and also in probing Supernovae.
Dr. T. Bhavani, Bengaluru
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