“Small Neutral Ones”
Their mass adds up to more than
We can see in the night sky,
Even through our telescopes,
More than all the atoms.
They mostly go in a straight line
Towards the edge of the universe,
Straight through any planets,
Stars, mountains, and atoms.
40 billion just went through your left nostril.
They are virtually unstoppable.
When one is detected,
It is called an event.
They oscillate,
Even changing to a different
Flavor and mass,
Making them even more undetectable
They live and die
But by the weak force—
Born by decay
And dying when
They become something else—
Being immune to the
Strong nuclear force
And the electromagnetic force.
Wolfgang Pauli made them up,
For bookkeeping purposes,
When a neutron decayed
Into a proton and an electron.
No one doubts their existence now.
They are all that can get through
Fifty feet of iron.
What are they?