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Neutrinos have no mass and no charge. Therefore, they are not deflected by the other particles in our body and pass through us. Photons too have no mass and no charge, but why are they being deflected then?

Darth Ewok
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3 Answers3

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Light rays are a combination of oscillating electric and magnetic fields, and both fields interact strongly with charged particles. That's why light rays are strongly scattered by matter. The relationship between light rays and photons is more complicated than you might think, but this also explains why photons scatter off charged matter even though the photon has no charge.

By contrast a neutrino only interacts via the weak force. It's a little misleading to say this is a weak force - we should rather say it's a very short range force. Either way, for a neutrino to interact with electrons or nuclei is many orders of magnitude less probable than for a photon to interact.

Community
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John Rennie
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Photons are electromagnetic radiation which means they interact with charged particles in our bodies. More energetic ones like x-ray and gamma rays do pass through while visible light mostly doesn't.

Lewis Miller
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wishing all a happy holiday ! Neutrinos belong to the Leptons, where as photons are a boson, as stated above they are a force carrier...! Due to their extremely small size, or perhaps some other "hidden variable", neutrinos interact weakly.... https://www.mpi-hd.mpg.de/manitop/StandardModel/pics/standard_model_elementary_particles.png

Hogan
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