Do any neutrinos get stopped by the Earth?

Only extremely high-energy ones. At energies of many teraelectronvolts and above, the interaction probability rises enough that the Earth starts to absorb a fraction of them — an effect IceCube has measured.

How many neutrinos pass through the Earth?

Trillions upon trillions every second, mostly from the Sun. They stream through the planet continuously, day and night, as if it were not there.

September 17, 2026 · Fundamentals · 2 min read

Can Neutrinos Travel Through the Earth?

Q: Can neutrinos travel through the Earth?

Yes. The vast majority of neutrinos pass straight through the entire Earth without interacting at all, because they interact only through the feeble weak force. To a neutrino, the planet is almost completely transparent.

Yes — almost every neutrino passes straight through the Earth without stopping. Only at extreme energies does the planet begin to absorb them. Here is why the Earth is nearly transparent to neutrinos.

Yes — neutrinos travel through the Earth with ease. Almost every neutrino that reaches the planet passes straight through it and out the other side without interacting even once. To a neutrino, the entire Earth is nearly transparent, which is one of the most striking demonstrations of just how weakly these particles interact.

Why is the Earth transparent to neutrinos?

Because neutrinos feel only the weak force, their chance of hitting anything is set by an extraordinarily small cross-section. Even the eight thousand kilometres of rock and iron across the Earth’s diameter present almost no obstacle. At night, the neutrinos from the Sun do not stop coming — they simply reach you from below, having sailed straight up through the whole planet. In the same way, trillions pass through your body every second.

When does the Earth block neutrinos?

There is a limit. The neutrino cross-section grows with energy, so at very high energies the Earth is no longer perfectly transparent. For neutrinos in the multi-teraelectronvolt range and above, the planet begins to absorb a noticeable fraction — an effect that the IceCube observatory actually used to measure the high-energy neutrino cross-section, by comparing how many neutrinos arrived from different angles through the Earth.

A useful kind of transparency

That the Earth is see-through to neutrinos is not just a curiosity — it is useful. It means neutrinos carry information out of the Earth’s deep interior as geoneutrinos, and it lets detectors use the whole planet as a filter, accepting upward-going neutrinos while blocking almost everything else.

References

1.S. Navas et al. (Particle Data Group), Review of Particle Physics (neutrino properties), Phys. Rev. D (2024). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.110.030001.

← All articles