Talk:Massless particle
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Weyl fermions have not been confirmed
editThe table in this article listing the physical massless particles contains a row for Weyl fermions and labels them as "confirmed". To my knowledge, Weyl fermions have not been experimentally confirmed to exist. Neutrinos were originally thought to be Weyl fermions but we now know that they are not. This label of "confirmed" is therefore either wrong, or it is misleading and I am misunderstanding its meaning. Note that if Weyl fermions have indeed been experimentally confirmed to exist (and I am just not personally aware of it), then this is a big deal and the "confirmed" statement should definitely have a citation to a research article supporting this claim. I am not an expert in this area, so I hesitate to make this change myself. 192.195.76.57 (talk) 14:39, 4 November 2022 (UTC)
Including Weyl fermions
editIncluding Weyl fermions in this table is highly misleading. It makes it look like they are on equal footing with photons and gluons. Weyl fermions are hypothetical, unconfirmed, not hinted by theory to need to exist, and mostly ignored by fundamental theoretical physicists. They should therefore be removed from the table and added as a side comment at the end of the article. If this table contains Weyl fermions, then it should contain every hypothetical, speculative massless particle that someone dreamed up and every massless pseudo-particle, such as phonons. But that would dilute the meaning of the table. Weyl fermions should be removed from this table. Note that, by the same argument, you could also say that gravitons should be removed from this table. Although gravitons are hypothetical and unconfirmed, their existence, or the existence of something like them, are required by the physical law. Gravitational waves have been repeatedly confirmed to exist, gravitational waves have no mass, and therefore whatever particles or fundamental bits that gravitational waves are made of must be massless. For this reason, gravitons are important enough to belong on this table.