Do go watch this latest full episode of PBS's Nova, for a wonderful journey down the rabbit hole -- where neutrinos alone. . . may go (first aired this week, nationwide).
And it may well turn out, that the fourth form of neutrino. . . is actually the dark matter that makes up 95 per cent of the known Universe's mass.
Not detectable -- but we know it must be out there. . . exerting forces we cannot even imagine as yet. Amazing.
नमस्ते
Cosmic Gall
Neutrinos, they are very small.
They have no charge and have no mass
And do not interact at all.
The earth is just a silly ball
To them, through which they simply pass,
Like dustmaids down a drafty hall
Or photons through a sheet of glass.
They snub the most exquisite gas,
Ignore the most substantial wall,
Cold-shoulder steel and sounding brass,
Insult the stallion in his stall,
And, scorning barriers of class,
Infiltrate you and me! Like tall
And painless guillotines, they fallDown through our heads into the grass.
At night, they enter at Nepal
And pierce the lover and his lass
From underneath the bed -- you call
It wonderful. . . I call it crass.
Collected Poems 1953 | 1993 -- John Updike
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