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Message text written by INTERNET:phys-l@atlantis.uwf.edu
It bothers me greatly to see this news media event. These guys aren't
announcing their result on the publication date; they're announcing
that they've submitted it to PRL!<
Leigh, they are giving a talk at a conference, thus "publishing" their
data.
I've seen claims that this discovery (if correct) "cooks" the Standard
Model, or at least will force its modification, but my impression is that
the Standard Model says nothing about neutrino masses and that
they are set arbitrarily to zero just because that is the simplest
assumption.
But that any other (small) value would also be fine, so this result, albeit
very interesting, will not produce an improvement of the Standard Model.
Correct?
Bill Larson
Geneva
Dear Bill,
Since the Standard Model is unable to predict any particle masses, I, too,
can't see how nonzero neutrino masses can "cook" the Standard Model, as
even the usually reliable Robert Park has announced in _What's New_.
Neutrino masses were set to zero as a convenient assumption in the
"standard" Standard Model. Now there are perhaps three new free parameters
in the model (or as many as six, if we allow for possible mass differences
between neutrinos and antineutrinos).
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Harvey Picker * e-mail: harvey.picker@mail.trincoll.edu
Physics Department * phone: (860)297-2299
Trinity College * fax: (860)987-6239
Hartford, CT 06106 *
USA *
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