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The nuclear emission with the greatest penetrating power is the gamma ray.

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To a large extent, the penetrating power of a nuclear particle depends on its velocity, and also, to a large extent, to the nature of the material it is penetrating.

Alpha particles are easily absorbed, unless they are going very fast. They can usually be absorbed by a piece of paper, if they come from radioactive materials. In space, however, they are often faster, and can pass through a human body.

Beta particles penetrate a bit deeper, and need something more to stop them. A thin piece of aluminum may be enough. Again this depends on the nature of the material and the speed.

Gamma rays are much harder to stop. By nature, being photons, they move at the speed of light. They are best blocked by material with high atomic numbers. Lead is good at blocking them. As odd as it sounds, depleted uranium is used to make shields for gamma rays because it is 1.6 times as dense as lead, and has a very long half life. When gamma rays lose energy, they do not slow down, but rather have their wave lengths increased. Eventually, they lose all ability to penetrate the dense materials through which they are going.

Neutrons are really hard to stop because, like gamma rays, they have no charge. They can penetrate a lot of matter, but are best slowed down by atoms with low atomic numbers. Water is a good shield - lead is not. Neutrons can penetrate quite a lot of material, but they lose velocity and energy as they do because they bump into the nuclei of atoms and impart energy to them.

The neutrino is a really a tough one to quantify. Neutrinos, like neutrons and gamma rays, have no charge, and might penetrate very deeply. But generally they have very little energy. Neutrinos of 3 GeV have been recorded, which would indicate they are going faster than the speed of light, though there is a pretty good chance the measurement was not perfect, and it would only require a little error to bring the velocity below light speed. An object going this fast, as small as a neutrino, and without a charge, would be my candidate for a prime suspect for having the greatest penetrating ability.

So perhaps it is the neutrino. But who know? There are a couple hundred known subatomic particles, any of them might be an emission of great penetration, and I have never even seen the spelling for most of them.

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