Impressive. How can you wait all those long times before getting results for your researches is beyond me :p physicists' patience is under appreciated!
In 2019, an upper limit of 1.1 eV was set on the neutrino mass
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the sum of the three neutrino masses has to be smaller than 0.26 eV.
Sounds like a factor of 5 isn't enough? You mentioned "some can be massless" in one of our convos before, can 2 of them be massless and just 1 has the mass, or is there no clue yet?
Thanks for passing by, and the interesting comments/questions.
We have indeed a factor of 5 between the 1.1 eV and 0.26 eV bounds, but we should keep in mind that those limits are coming from independent experimental probes. What is aimed at KATRIN is to improve the 1.1 eV limit without relying on cosmology. It is always crucial to have independent checks on a given quantity (here the sum of the three light neutrino masses).
Data is not incompatible with the fact that one neutrino could be massless. For now, only two mass differences have been measured, and there is room for the lightest of the three neutrinos to have a mass compatible with zero. However, this does not allow two neutrinos to be massless.
Okay, that clears it up.
Yup, I was wondering what if data doesn't match up. Because currently it does seem far off from observations with cosmology.
If data does not match, then we will have another puzzle to add to our already-long list. I would like to think this would be an exciting situation :)