The shadow universe

Fermi lab, in suburban Chicago, is going to send a beam of neutrinos underneath Wisconsin to be collected all the way in northern Minnesota, all in the hopes of understanding these mysterious entities. From Blasting Neutrinos Under Wisconsin May Yield Big Payoff – washingtonpost.com:

Neutrinos blast right through the Earth with nary a spark. They interact so rarely and so weakly with normal matter that they can zip right through solid rock as though it were not even there — much like light through a clear glass window. That’s why, contrary to the hopes of some private contractors who heard about a big new experiment under construction, Fermilab does not need to dig a tunnel underneath Wisconsin.

A common adjective applied to neutrinos is “ghostly.” They have no charge. Until recently, it was unclear if neutrinos had any mass at all (they do, but just a smidgen). Trillions of neutrinos from the sun pass through our bodies every minute, scientists say. You could be hit with a neutrino beam right between the eyes without getting so much as a blemish.

“These neutrinos are a type of matter that essentially form a shadow universe,” said Marvin Marshak, a University of Minnesota physicist working on the new neutrino experiment, called Nova. “They share space with us, but they have very little interaction with us. So you have neutrinos going through your body all the time — neutrinos from the sun, neutrinos from the cosmic rays coming down from space, neutrinos left over from the birth of the universe — but they go right through you.”

Again, the universe is far more mysterious than mere materialists realize. Even material is not so material any more. The more science learns, the more mysterious the universe proves to be.