Quantum wit

I didn't think sub-atomic particles could inspire poetry (it's hard enough with your usual "super-atomic" particles) but, turns out, Updike could write beautifully about anything.

Cosmic Gall
John Updike

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 fall
Down 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.


Anyone who can write that must be the possessor of great wit. (You're welcome, Updike.)
Cosmic Gall was first published in the collection Telephone Poles and Other Poems in 1963.

That was a year after 3 Japanese scientists discovered neutrino flavour mixing, and a bunch of American scientists discovered muon neutrinos (which, I'm told, should never be confused with electron neutrinos).

Yup, the 60s was a great decade for neutrinos.

Oh wait wait. You know how the neutrinos are rumored to travel faster than light?

Well, anyway, there's a joke I read about that.

“We don’t serve faster-than-light neutrinos here,” said the bartender. A neutrino walks into a bar.

Har. Har.