Physicists proposed a way to focus ghostly neutrinos into a laser-like beam, but new MIT calculations show that violent atomic recoil and the particles’ own quantum nature prevent the effect from taking hold.

Trillions of subatomic particles stream through every square inch of Earth, passing through solid rock, massive stars, and human bodies every second without leaving a trace. These particles, known as neutrinos, carry near-zero mass and interact so weakly with normal matter that physicists have struggled to detect them, much less control them into a focused beam, since their discovery in 1956.

Last year, MIT physics professor Joe Formaggio and Ben Jones, then an associate professor at the University of Texas at Arlington and now at the University of Manchester, proposed a theoretical way around that physical barrier.