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The WiggleZ sky survey, which last year announced that its map of 240,000 galaxies provided strong evidence for “dark energy”, has now formed the basis for a new estimate of neutrino mass.

Neutrino mass has proved elusive: it’s easier to measure the difference between the masses of different neutrino species than it is to gain a “baseline” absolute neutrino mass.

The survey data sought to use astronomers’ understanding of galaxy formation to help constrain the mass range of the neutrino. In particular, the scientists focused on high-redshift, star-forming, and blue galaxies in the WiggleZ sample.

A mixture of analytical modeling and simulation provides them with a “95% confidence” estimate of neutrino mass: ∑mν<0.60  eV, with the other end of the scale at ∑mν<0.29 eV, “the strongest neutrino mass constraint derived from spectroscopic galaxy redshift surveys”.

The upper limit is considerably greater than previous estimates gleaned from galactic surveys.

To put that in perspective: the rest mas of the electron is around 0.511 MeV – roughly one to two million times the neutrino mass estimated by Riemer-Sørensen’s group (which also included scientists from the USA, South Africa and Canada).

The WiggleZ survey was conducted between August 2006 and January 2011, and its data is online here. ®

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