Going beyond the Salam-Weinberg standard model with decaying neutrinos

It has not yet been possible to use experiments to go beyond the standard model, although one would expect this model to be superseded by a more comprehensive one. Here I show that the decaying neutrino theory for the ionisation of the interstellar medium (Sciama 1990, 1993) requires a decay lifetime at least 1013 times smaller than the standard model value. The required short lifetime can be achieved, for example, in supersymmetric theories with broken R parity. The present status of the decaying neutrino theory is reviewed, and a variety of observational tests, from both astronomy and cosmology, are described. Finally an account is given of a potentially decisive experiment being conducted on a satellite currently orbiting the earth. (author)