Reexamination of evidence for a radiatively decaying neutrino

Large-aperture low-dispersion exposures obtained with the IUE short-wavelength camera have been reanalyzed to examine the possibility of using nonstandard electroweak models to explain the steplike signal of 5-sigma significance in the cosmic background claimed by Auriemma et al. (1985). The present results show that no evidence yet exists for the postulated cosmic UV radiation from neutrino decay. Error bars of the order of 20,000 photons/sq cm per s per A per sr are found for the brightnesses of Auriemma et al., and it is suggested that their steps may be due to fixed pattern noise in the detector rather than to a cosmic signal.