Beyond The Standard Model: This Time for Real

It has been a great privilege to attend this conference, which I am sure the future will regard as historic. I want to thank the organizers for making it in every way a very enjoyable experience, as well. Undoubtedly it will take us, collectively, many years to do full justice to the wonderful discovery announced here, that neutrinos have non-zero mass. Many important tasks remain at the level of pure phenomenology, most obviously perhaps that of integrating the firm atmospheric oscillation results with the long-standing but still confusing solar neutrino anomalies, and the possible hints from LSND of a third distinct effect. However I am going to indulge myself by leaping over these vital issues, to discourse and speculate on the larger implications of the discovery for fundamental physics. Some of us have been hoping for many years to see results of this kind. Now that they are coming in, we look forward with both eagerness and trepidation to the confrontation of our dreams with reality. Let me remind you what’s at stake.