🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <MATT.92Aug11135831@physics16.berkeley.edu>, matt@physics16.berkeley.edu (Matt Austern) writes...
> 
>Only if you think that the "17 keV neutrino" is necessarily the tau
>neutrino!  I agree that this is the most attractive possibility, but
>there are plenty of other models out there...  (Including, for
>example, the suggestion that what we're looking at isn't a new
>particle, but rather a new interaction.)

IMHO, the only reason that most people take the 17 KeV data very seriously
in spite of the contentious experimental situation is that there is a neat
Standard Model (TM) "fit" for the data.  If we happened to already have
a tau-neutrino mass upper limit of 3 KeV (Actual limit: 31 MeV thanks to 
new BES results on tau mass) then fewer people would be credulous.

If it weren't for this rather open experimental situation then the 
17 KeV neutino story would be in the same class as many other small
experimental discrepencies which attract our attention and get studied in 
detail, but do not capture the headlines.

-Scott
--------------------
Scott I. Chase			"The question seems to be of such a character
SICHASE@CSA2.LBL.GOV		that if I should come to life after my death
				and some mathematician were to tell me that it
				had been definitely settled, I think I would
				immediately drop dead again."      - Vandiver