The invisible particles passing through your body every second

Space · Published 31 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: You are currently being bombarded by a ghostly rain of subatomic particles. They pass through solid walls, the earth, and your own skin without leaving a trace. While they are among the most abundant particles in the universe, we still know remarkably little about them.

Neutrinos are often described as 'ghost particles' because of their incredibly weak interaction with matter. They only interact via the weak nuclear force, meaning they can travel through vast distances of solid material almost entirely undisturbed. To put this in perspective, approximately 100 million neutrinos from the sun pass through your thumbnail every single second. Despite this constant flux, the average person will only have one neutrino actually strike an atom in their body during their entire lifetime. They represent the most abundant particles in existence after photons. Their elusive nature makes them nearly impossible to observe directly when they do not interact.

These particles are produced wherever nuclear reactions occur. Major sources include the core of the sun, the center of the earth, nuclear reactors, and high-energy particle accelerators. However, they also emerge from everyday objects like bananas. This happens because bananas contain significant amounts of potassium, an element that is naturally radioactive. As this potassium decays, it releases neutrinos into the environment. Each individual banana produces more than one million of these particles every day. This means your kitchen can function as a small neutrino factory.

Because they are so difficult to detect—being essentially invisible unless they happen to collide with something—neutrinos remain one of the least understood components of our universe. Scientists like Dr. Kirsty Duffy study them to answer fundamental cosmological questions. One of the primary mysteries involves the Big Bang: why did the universe end up filled with matter instead of being annihilated by an equal amount of anti-matter? Research into these particles aims to explain the underlying mechanics of our reality. Physicists seek to understand how all components of existence fit together.

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