## Thursday, June 24, 2010

### MINOS Neutrinos III

A summary plot from MINOS: Observe that the neutrino angle is consistent with $\pi / 4$, whereas the antineutrino angle is closer to $\textrm{sin} \theta = 1/ \sqrt{3}$.

The blogosphere is being fairly quiet about this, presumably because almost nobody seriously believes the result, but other random reports come from a press release, the Physics World blog and the ICHEP blog.

1. It is easy to understand that people are cautious. We know that also experimental groups produce hype nowadays. As one learns from Lubos blog the finding requires CPT breaking and this in turn breaking of Lorentz invariance. These symmetries are the cornerstones of quantum field theories. For more see my blog.

2. "Believes the result"?? What result? Good fit? Just look at the standard deviation oval sizes! The data points are meaningless because the error limits are so big. Maybe that's why the blogsphere isn't excited, I fear. Your model agrees with a very uncertain piece of experimental data. So what. If you can predict exactly some experimental result which is more confidently known, then it will look more impressive. (But I suppose you all know about this problem already, huh? It's just me that's stupid like the little boy who points out that the Emperor's New Clothes are a con? I have to get better vision.)

- Stupid internet surfer.

3. I think the blogosphere is VERY INTERESTED in this, but it waits for more flesh on the bones. And I see no wrong in this attempt to get attention from Kea, because her numbers are very interesting. If you was in her clothes I bet you would do exactly the same.

Why don't you have stomach to stay by your critique by name? THIS IS NOT NICELY DONE.

If you have a vision you could just tell it insted.

4. Stupid Internet Surfer (you did call yourself that)

I am not an experimentalist. To a theorist, the important thing is that the quoted error ranges for the two delta squared values DO NOT overlap. That leaves two basic possibilities for a theorist to consider:
1. the experimentalists were not careful
2. mainstream theorists' views about quantum gravity are wrong

Given that my theoretical prejudices (i) quantitatively agree with the experiment and (ii) already disagree with mainstream theory ... well, I think anyone can figure out which of 1. and 2. seems more reasonable.

5. http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/hep-ph/pdf/0504/0504274v5.pdf