[sjastro]

Originally Posted by CraigS

Ok … I'm perplexed although, I concede I may be confusing sufficiently separable parts of the Standard Model.

From Rob's article, the detection of the neutrinos is actually inferred primarily from the actual detection of muons, and secondarily from various nuclei breaking into 'showers of light hadrons'. This interpretation is very much dependent on the Standard Model as the back-drop for the whole experiment. The power spectrum argument is then derived from the momenta distribution of the muons remaining following the decay of the neutrinos, (which results from them having given up their unit electric charges). This is also critically dependent on the Standard Model back-drop.

Hi Craig,

The neutrinos don't decay, they may oscillate between the electron, muon and tau neutrinos. The neutrino detection process involves part of the energy and momentum of the neutrino being transferred to the nuclei in the detector fluid resulting in the emittance of a Cherenkov type radiation.
The reaction is a result of the conservation of energy and momentum, not on the symmetry requirements of the Standard Model.
Incidentally neutrino oscillation cannot be explained by the Standard Model.

So then I read this article about the implications if the Higgs is not found next year. This guy, (Prof. Dr. Siegfried Bethke, Director at the Max Planck Institute of Physics in Munich), says of the implications of non-detection:

Ok … so we have a respected particle Physicist, (he is not alone in his prediction, either), saying that the entire 'Standard Model' may have to be scrapped if the Higgs is not discovered (which seems a little extreme, to me), and yet, all of the neutrino measurements, (and its counter arguments), are critically dependent on a solid Standard Model .. which seem to be not all that 'solid' at all !

Scrapping the Standard Model seems somewhat of an overkill. The Standard Model is clearly incomplete, but theoretical predictions of the model led to a host of particle discoveries in the 70s and 80s. How does one explain the discoveries if the model is wrong?

Is my interpretation too simplistic here? I seem to recall that the Electo-weak theory and Supersymmetry are at stake if the Higgs isn't found however, this guy seems to think the entire Standard Model will have to get the heave-ho !

The electroweak theory was built on the Higgs mechanism, but there are several models that preserve the theory without relying on the existence of Higgs bosons.

Regards

Steven