Physicists Rock the Standard Model in Dallas
Faye Flam
The 1400 physicists who converged on Dallas 2 weeks ago for the International High Energy Physics meeting came from all over. Ask them about the state of their field, however, and you'll find a common dreamto go beyond the standard model of particles and forces. For physicists "searching for chinks in the model's armor," as several put it, the elusive, unobtrusive neutrino is a promising object of study. And while the meeting saw the possibility of a superheavy "17-keV" neutrino fade, cosmic ray-produced neutrinos gave new hints of physics in that over-the-rainbow region beyond the standard model.