Scientists Estimate 100 Trillion Neutrinos Cross Each Body Every Second as Muons Add Hundreds More
Updated
Updated · Livescience.com · Aug 30
Scientists Estimate 100 Trillion Neutrinos Cross Each Body Every Second as Muons Add Hundreds More
2 articles · Updated · Livescience.com · Aug 30
Summary
About 100 trillion neutrinos pass through each person every second, while tens to hundreds of muons also cross the body in the same time, according to physicists explaining Earth’s constant exposure to cosmic particles.
Nearly all of those neutrinos come from nuclear fusion in the sun and pass through matter without notice; cosmic rays from beyond the solar system instead strike the atmosphere and create secondary particle showers, including muons.
IceCube’s 1-cubic-kilometer Antarctic detector infers the neutrino flood by recording the tiny fraction that collide in ice and emit Cherenkov light, then working backward using detector size, runtime and interaction probabilities.
Only roughly one neutrino interaction in a human body may occur over a lifetime, researchers said, making them effectively harmless; cosmic radiation adds about 0.4 millisieverts a year on average, still a minor health risk at ground level.
Those particles are still scientifically valuable: muons can reveal hidden structures such as pyramid passages, while high-energy neutrinos probe extreme environments around black holes, exploding stars and other cosmic accelerators.