In a neutrino league of our own

Sir, – It’s great to see the public interest in the recent neutrino experiment.

Sir, – It’s great to see the public interest in the recent neutrino experiment.

Intriguingly, the only people to have actually measured the mass of the notoriously elusive neutrino, something the international particle physics community has not yet been able to do, is our own State Examinations Commission.

In true de Selby style the SEC quotes a mass for neutrinos in its Formulae and Tables booklet, used in Irish secondary schools and replacing the old Log Tables.

Perhaps we should send a copy of the booklet to the scientists in Italy? And perhaps this is Ireland’s contribution to European particle physics? Ireland is not a member of CERN (home to the LHC, and source of the apparently faster-than-light neutrinos), and Irish politicians have for years resisted all attempts to get Ireland to join. This puts us in the same scientific league as Cyprus, Estonia, Malta, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovenia, as being the only EU member states not in CERN.

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Even our economic rivals, Portugal and Greece, are CERN members! – Yours, etc,

Dr BRIAN DOLAN,

Department of Mathematical

Physics,

NUI Maynooth,

Co Kildare.