WIDE OPEN: ALICE, one of six LHC experiments.
Image: Courtesy of Maximilien Brice/CERN
-
Gravity's Engines
We’ve long understood black holes to be the points at which the universe as we know it comes to an end. Often billions of times more massive than the Sun, they...
Read More »
For decades now physicists have contemplated the idea of an entire shadow world of elementary particles, called supersymmetry. It would elegantly solve mysteries that the current Standard Model of particle physics leaves unexplained, such as what cosmic dark matter is. Now some are starting to wonder. The most powerful collider in history, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), has yet to see any new phenomena that would betray an unseen level of reality. Although the search has only just begun, it has made some theorists ask what physics might be like if supersymmetry is not true after all.
“Wherever we look, we see nothing—that is, we see no deviations from the Standard Model,” says Giacomo Polesello of Italy’s National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Pavia. Polesello is a leading member of the 3,000-strong international collaboration that built and operates ATLAS, one of two cathedral-size general-purpose detectors on the LHC ring. The other such detector, CMS, has seen nothing, either, according to an update presented at a conference in the Italian Alps in March.
Theorists introduced supersymmetry in the 1960s to connect the two basic types of particles seen in nature, called fermions and bosons. Roughly speaking, fermions are the constituents of matter (the electron being the quintessential example), whereas bosons are the carriers of the fundamental forces (the photon in the case of electromagnetism). Supersymmetry would give every known boson a heavy “superpartner” that is a fermion and every known fermion a heavy partner that is a boson. “It is the next step up toward the ultimate view of the world, where we make everything symmetric and beautiful,” says Michael Peskin, a theorist at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
The monumental collider at CERN near Geneva should have the oomph to produce those superparticles. Currently the LHC is smashing protons with an energy of four trillion electron volts (TeV) apiece, up from 3.5 TeV last year. This energy is divided among the quarks and gluons that make up the protons, so the collision can generate new particles with the equivalent of about 1 TeV of mass. But despite the high expectations (and energies), so far nature has not cooperated. LHC physicists have been searching for signs of particles new to science and have seen none. If superparticles exist, they must be even heavier than many physicists had hoped. “To put it bluntly,” Polesello says, “the situation is that we have ruled out a number of ‘easy’ models that should have showed up right away.” His colleague Ian Hinchliffe of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory echoes him: “If you look at the range of masses and particles that have been excluded, it’s quite impressive.”
Many are still hopeful. “There are still very viable ways of building supersymmetry models,” Peskin says. Expecting to see new physics after just a year of data taking was unrealistic, says Joseph Lykken, a theorist on the CMS team.
What has theorists on edge, however, is that for supersymmetry to solve the problems for which it was invented in the first place, at least a few of the superparticles should not be too heavy. To constitute dark matter, for example, they need to weigh no more than a few tenths of 1 TeV.
Another reason most physicists want some superparticles to be light lies in the Higgs boson, another major target of the LHC. All elementary particles that have mass are supposed to get it through their interaction with this boson and, secondarily, with a halo of fleeting “virtual particles.” In most cases, the symmetries of the Standard Model ensure that these virtual particles cancel one another out, so they contribute only modestly to mass. The exception, ironically, is the Higgs itself. Calculations based on the Standard Model yield the paradoxical result that the boson’s mass should be infinite. Superpartners would solve this mystery by providing greater scope for cancellations. A Higgs mass of around 0.125 TeV, as suggested by preliminary results announced in December 2011, would be right in the range where supersymmetry predicts it should be. But in that case, the superparticles would need to have a fairly low mass.
Rights & Permissions
See what we're tweeting about
33 Comments
Add CommentThe ugly standard model, the untraceable Higgs, the non-existing supersymetrie... ever had the feeling that contemporary physics is in a dead end? That the more accurate the measurements and equipments become the less certain scientists are about direction? All that uncertainty... maybe Heisenberg could have explained why being obsessed with detail can blind to reality.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPhysicists are never 'certain about direction' JC. The details, what is actually observed, is all their really is. All these theories do is encapsulate our understanding of what happens in some mathematical model. It is a recognition of patterns of behavior in the actual way that nature works. You can only approach that in one way, do actual experiments, observe the results, and construct mathematical models. If one doesn't work in a given domain, then you construct another one. What other approach would you suggest?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRegarding the search for new ideas, given the relentlessly negative results from the LHC, consider the following.
A discrete fractal model called Discrete Scale Relativity successfully:
- predicted pulsar-planets,
- predicted trillions of unbound planetary-mass "nomads",
- predicted a striking lack of planets orbiting the lowest mass M-dwarf stars.
- predicted that many exoplanet systems formed by the capture of unbound systems, as now seems likely.
The new fractal paradigm also makes definitive predictions about the dark matter, explains the fine structure constant for the first time, and offers a promising path to unification of quantum mechanics and relativity.
Given that fractal phenomena are ubiquitous in nature, perhaps those looking for new ideas that can enlighten us about the real world, as opposed to Platonic fantasy worlds, will consider Discrete Scale Relativity, rather than ignoring it for another 35 years.
RLO
http://www3.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw
Discrete Scale Relativity
Yet again, a key particle that modern physics needs to exist apparently doesn't, according to the LHC. Much of modern physics is built up with epicycle upon epicycle. One broad theory fails to match many observations, so it is plugged with epicycles, which then create their own problems which have to be plugged with more epicycles. Why does nature have to obey rules? Why does it have to be "beautiful" and simple? Why do we think nature is ultimately even understandable? There are critical methodological flaws in the way physics (and science generally) works, and these problems are more an issue of epistemology than anything else.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIs it possible that the reason researchers haven't found any heavy superpartners is that the 'standard' particles ARE the heavy ones & they should be looking for the light ones?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf "the Higgs boson is not an elementary particle but a composite of other particles" what holds it together? If it's gravity wouldn't that make some other particle the gravitational force-carrier? If it's one of the other forces (EM, strong or weak) would that mean that gravity is not a fundamental force, but a by-product of the other force?
@ rloldershaw - "A discrete fractal model called Discrete Scale Relativity"
Don't you mean YOUR discrete factal model? Because I can't find anything about 'discrete scale relativity' that doesn't have your name on it.
@rloldershaw - (yeah, reply seems to be borked today)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't think I'm convinced. There are vast differences between the Solar System and a Rutherford atom for instance. Yes, you can note some very rough similarities and patterns across scale. I'm simply not seeing where you've demonstrated anything more profound than that different physical forces operating on different scales obey similar laws.
Nor do your scaling constants seem to relate to anything else. You just seem to pull values willy nilly out of thin air, do some very 'back of the envelope' calculations with them that lack even order-of-magnitude error bounds and say "see, the Solar System is like an atom!". What would the ground state of the Solar System look like? Wouldn't an atom that was rescaled by an order of magnitude or two look very different? Yet you can't nail down your scaling factor even that well. Finally you use different scaling factors whenever it suites you.
I don't disagree that nature often looks somewhat similar at different scales, it isn't a particularly new notion, but I do question the utility of your theory. At BEST it needs to be FAR more rigorous before it has any predictive value, and even then what would it predict? That we might be likely to find large scale analogs of certain small scale phenomena? Ponds are like 'little oceans' too, but that doesn't mean they are all that similar beyond being 'bodies of water', and likewise your atoms and galaxies etc don't seem terribly similar when you look at them in detail.
Ultimately, I think physics can reach only one of two end states. One is that there is an infinite hierarchy of higher laws explaining lower ones, in which case we will reach a frontier of energies or distances we cannot ever hope to cross.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe other is that we will reach a final wall where there are fundamental facts about the Universe that just "are" with no further justification. We will finally, perhaps, find a parameter that accounts for the speed of light, Planck's Constant and gravity, but it will have the value it has simply "because."
The practical results of either outcome will be very much the same. We will simply have to accept that the Universe is the way it is without any additional explanation.
Of course, if you believe in the Multiverse, we're there already. We have the Universe we do because it just turned out that way.
I think the problem is more of arrogance or pride getting in the way of looking for reality. Physicists want the standard model to work so badly they begin to look for excuses to fit the model and make it work, rather than searching for real facts. Take dark matter, the theory was invented to make other theories work or gaps in them. Not that this is entirely bad we have to start somewhere but when observations point to different directions are ignored and lack of evidence for the theory is explained away then science is not really being done.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is plenty of so called science out there which is really a belief being stated and a scientist seeking to prove the belief. Super-symmetry is something like this, as is dark matter. What is sad is these both might be real but when they are treated like biblical truths then scientists stop looking for the real answers.
"There is plenty of so called science out there which is really a belief being stated and a scientist seeking to prove the belief. Super-symmetry is something like this, as is dark matter. What is sad is these both might be real but when they are treated like biblical truths then scientists stop looking for the real answers. "
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd yet supersymmetry will be abandoned the moment it fails or relegated to an interesting but ultimately uninformative niche. Who knows, in 50 years it might be trotted out again, reworked and provide a revelation.
Dark matter? I see PLENTY of scientists freely admitting that they don't understand it, it might not exist in the way they've hypothesized and their ready, willing, and able to discard it, and actively question it, and pretty much every other theory out there to boot.
I think science is MUCH less locked up in people's preconceptions than you're admitting to. These sorts of statements have been floating around for 200 years or more, and yet somehow science never grinds to a halt. Instead it moves on, and new theories explain a bit more in a more consistent way and enable more predictions.
Science is doing OK. Physics will move on.
I think ultimately Steve D is right. Everything points to either an eventual situation where there is simply one master constant that can't be explained or every 'law' we can invent has some inconsistency that has to be explained by another law. They are probably the same thing viewed differently. Science is not really about first causes. It is really rather dangerous to call escatological 'theories' like much of cosmology science at all.
"The exception, ironically, is the Higgs itself. Calculations based on the Standard Model yield the paradoxical result that the boson’s mass should be infinite." Weren't we all warned not to have truck with infinities? In my experience, this means the calculator simply overflowed when I tried to divide by zero.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA simple point I keep making about relativity is that we try to incorporate the past to future arrow of time as a fundamental dimension, but the simple explanation is that it's the changing configuration of what is, turning future into past. For reference, the earth doesn't travel some fourth dimension from yesterday to tomorrow. Tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth rotates. This would make time an emergent effect of action, similar to temperature, not the underlaying basis for it. We don't have quantum super positions and cats both dead and alive, if we eliminate the arrow of time and let it emerge from the action. It is the collapse of probability, potential becoming actual, future becoming present, which creates the change measured as time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI raise this as just one example of simple solutions ignored in favor of complex patches on old assumptions. Yes, relativity is mathematically accurate, but as correlation, not causation. Epicycles were quite accurate, for their day, but that didn't mean there were giant cosmic gearwheels. Similarly there isn't some fabric of spacetime telling matter and energy what to do and that we can travel through wormholes.
For much of human existence, it was obvious the sun travels across the sky from east to west and it still seems that way, much as we seem to move from past events to future ones, as though we were walking along a path.
To correct physics won't be a matter of finding the right answer to todays questions, but finding if these are the questions we need to ask in the first place.
"but the simple explanation is that it's the changing configuration of what is, turning future into past"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat is change except the effect of the passage of time? Without time you have no change to measure against, yet time is nowhere in the fundamental laws of physics, only state.
Believe me, the people have been studying these theories HAVE thought deeply about this kind of thing. Science doesn't provide epistemological answers though. It is all provisional and simply explains what we observe. The process of observation is itself (being a process) time-dependent. There's no separating the meat from the potatoes here.
tharter,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Physicists are never 'certain about direction'."
Agree, but if something is not going anywhere for a very long time one must start to wonder if one is not in a dead-end = not going anywhere = no direction.
"The details, what is actually observed, is all their really is."
Maybe all details considered, it's really the end of the road for theories we've come to love? Emotionally too hard to leave those theories behind maybe?
"It is a recognition of patterns of behavior in the actual way that nature works."
I fully agree and I believe that the patterns exist except that we might not see them because we might look from the wrong angle. The patterns are independent of the observer whereas the observer wants to see the patterns he wants to see = he wants to verify his theory. Observation is an exercise in objectivity. Objectively there is quite a substantial amount of evidence that we are in a dead-end, resp. that the patterns are not what we expect.
Or as a friend puts it: how dare Nature not confirm what our theories tell us?
"You can only approach that in one way, do actual experiments, observe the results, and construct mathematical models."
Agree. And after decades of work there is no Higgs, no supersymmetry, and the look of the standard model has not improved over time either. All three have moved physics forward but maybe they have reached the end of their shelf-life?
"What other approach would you suggest?"
I personally favour a radically new approach/experiment, loosely based on Mr E's famous axiom that imagination is more important than knowledge, and would suggest a moratorium during which everything is questioned and nothing is ruled out, not even the devil's advocate.
Steve D,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Ultimately, I think physics can reach only one of two end states."
I've been wondering along similar lines.
"One is that there is an infinite hierarchy of higher laws explaining lower ones, in which case we will reach a frontier of energies or distances we cannot ever hope to cross."
IMO this would go against the very idea of a basic universal coherence. I prefer to imagine that there is a set of rules that applies at and is common to all levels. A prime minister is nothing but a mechanic on a higher social level. Or in reverse, what is true for the mechanic is true for the prime minister. Social coherence only works if the rules are the same for the mechanic and the prime minister else their society will fall apart. Universal coherence only works if the rules are the same for everything in the universe (my unwashed opinion).
"The other is that we will reach a final wall where there are fundamental facts about the Universe that just "are" with no further justification."
If by this you mean a number of fundamental facts that are expressions of some fundamental laws I would agree. I believe there is something like a basic set of rules that is universally valid and which makes complete sense at all levels. The small question that remains is, what is that set?
Your image of a wall indicates the limits beyond which we cannot go. Stuff like "where does absolute nothingness come from and who started it?"
So I go back to what makes my universe coherent. It must be something universal. But for something to be universally true it must be fundamentally simple or it gets too complicated to apply to everything. So if there is a set of universal laws they must in essence be simple.
So yes, on one hand we could not see further than the wall constituted by "the edge of the universe" and we would have to accept that there will forever be limits beyond which we will never venture, but on the other hand I'd see the positive side and consider such a set an incredible tool to understand what goes on withIN the universe. That would do for the moment, no?
I think maybe the degree to which we are 'stuck' is overstated. Many advances have been made in mathematical formalisms, experimental physics, etc over the past 30 years. The SM has more-or-less remained the standard theoretical framework, but a lot of work and progress has been made around that. I'm not convinced there's a point we're stuck at.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOften progress in one area has to await progress in other areas. Arguably classical Newtonian mechanics were only arrived at after Newton himself invented a whole new mathematical formalism. Without calculus and related number-theory advances classical mechanics couldn't exist.
Likewise there are probably formalisms we lack at this time which are necessary to progress in modern high-energy physics. Some things cannot be rushed. We could reexamine our fundamental concepts all we want, and it won't help us anymore than Galileo re-examining his could have gotten him from his mechanics to Newton's without calculus.
Maybe we await the advent of a Newton, a Gauss, or a Riemann. Or maybe we just need the steady work of the 1000's of existing mathematical geniuses who work away on these things to bear fruit. I'm confident something will happen. We're FAR from being stuck at some dead end. In fact there are often too many possibilities to pursue. I'd be far more worried that at the energies we're probing now we simply can't afford to do enough experiments to narrow down the possibilities we can dream up.
"Without time you have no change to measure against, yet time is nowhere in the fundamental laws of physics, only state."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat's why it matters whether you see it as a progression from past to future, in which case it is the vector of time, or you see it as the changing configuration of the present, in which case it is change. With time, we have this vector of events. With change we have an effect of action. Do events presage action, or does action presage events?(hint: The process of observation is itself (being a process) time-dependent.)
The geometry of spacetime implies blocktime, that all events are manifest in their particular spacetime coordinates, such that events of a hundred years ago are ultimately no more or less real than those of the present. Viewing it from the other perspective, the same energy is always present, so old events/information are constantly being erased by the formation of new information.
The idea of time as vector arises from the assumption that reality is the measurement, so space and time are interrelated measurements, but when you measure space, you are measuring space. Distance, area, volume are aspects of space. What is the deeper state being measured? Time, on the other hand, is a measure of change and change is an effect of action. Temperature/scalar level of activity, is a measure of action. Such that if we were to vary the level of activity, it would correspondingly affect the rate of change. That's why clockrates vary under acceleration or gravity, because it changes the levels of atomic activity and thus rate of change.
It's fluctuating vacuum. Space is the vacuum. Fluctuation is the action.
This argument would create problems for cosmology, since the expansion of space is based on this premise, but if space expands, why does the speed of light remain constant? Presumably the expanding universe would cause galaxies to move apart and we would detect this because the light would have further to travel and eventually not reach us, but that implies a stable speed of light. How can space be expanding, if the most stable measure of intergalactic distance remains constant? That's increasing distance, as measured by C, not expanding space.
We observe the sun moving across the sky from east to west. Provisionally it was explained as being carried by Apollo's chariot, then by giant cosmic gearwheels. Now we understand the earth rotates west to east. So does the earth exist/move along a time vector from yesterday to tomorrow, or does tomorrow become yesterday because thee earth rotates?
tharter,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"I think maybe the degree to which we are 'stuck' is overstated."
Which is why I said I 'believe' (as opposed to 'think' or 'convinced') we could be in a dead-end. What makes me 'believe' this is that if there was a new theory and there was as much evidence that it might work as there is evidence that we seem stuck we would at least take a long, hard look at that theory. So I wonder why we don't take a long, hard look at the possibility of a dead-end? Why explore all possibilities except this one?
"The SM has more-or-less remained the standard theoretical framework, but a lot of work and progress has been made around that."
I keep thinking that the SM may only be a very good crutch. Regardless of how it helped us advance, still a crutch, as elegant, as natural, as efficient. If at least it was a bionic one.
"I'm not convinced there's a point we're stuck at."
Are you convinced that we are not stuck?
"Often progress in one area has to await progress in other areas."
Definitely, hence my suggestion of a moratorium. Not saying that people should stop doing what they do but that certain groups and institutions should form internal groups to check _everything_ under the sun. It doesn't have to be right and bright from the start. Ideas form like raindrops, sometimes it only takes a speck of dust. Unless we hope for another solitary effort?
"Likewise there are probably formalisms we lack at this time which are necessary to progress in modern high-energy physics."
I think that at this point we lack the new formalisms because we don't have the ideas that trigger them. IMO idea comes before form and imagination comes before idea. IOW and my approach is: imagine, filter, keep the best, develop into form.
"I'm confident something will happen."
Yes but will we recognize it? This I doubt. The human mechanisms powering those who kept Galileo and Darwin back are still the same. Let's say a luminary in a field is to judge an idea from someone outside? What has reality thaught us in this regard?
"We're FAR from being stuck at some dead end. In fact there are often too many possibilities to pursue."
Too many possibilities? In my experience more often than not a good sign of a lack of direction = lack of coherence.
So in theory I'd agree with you, a matter of the right idea at the right time. Can't rush that. OTOH I'm afraid that in practice the scientific community is as open to radically new ideas as the modern finance industry or the catholic church of the 17th century.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Tharter" [rhymes with...] says:
"I don't think I'm convinced. There are vast differences between the Solar System and a Rutherford atom for instance."
Here is what some REAL physicists say about real experimental observations of atoms:
The following excerpts are from a recent paper by Kalinski et al in Physical Review A 67, 032503, 2003.
"We predict the existence of a self-sustained one-electron wave packet moving on a circular orbit in the helium atom. The wave packet is localized in space, but does not spread in time. This is a realization within quantum theory of a classical object that has been called a "Rutherford atom," a localized planetary electron on an unquantized circular orbit under the influence of a massive charged core." [Got that Tharter?]
"[W]e provide the first demonstration of the existence of what has been called [14] a "Rutherford atom," i.e., the wave function for a single electron moving on an unquantized stable and nonspreading planetary orbit about a massive charged core."
Tharter has no clue about just how self-similar the physics of stellar systems and excited atoms [which become semi-classical systems as their energy state increases] actually are.
Perhaps Tharter should read my 4 papers [posted to arxiv.org] showing that 4 types of variable stars there manifest quantitative self-similarity [masses, morphologies and frequency spectra] with specific types of excited atoms.
Welcome to the new paradigm for the 21st century.
Robert L. Oldershaw
http://www3.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw
Discrete Scale Relativity
The technical term for your kind of theory is numerology. It's nonsense.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn my opinion Supersymmetry is wrong and the standard model in addition to string theory should be modified ruling out the idea of Supersymmetry.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAbout dark matter,maybe it is composed of particles related to gravitons which then interact with through gravity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDear Idiotwind,
Discrete Scale Relativity [ http://www3.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw ] was derived by carefully studying the actual physical systems of nature rather than Platonic idealizations.
The theory has led to at least 12 definitive predictions.
The theory has successfully predicted:
1. pulsar/planet systems
2. trillions of UNBOUND planetary-mass "nomad" objects
3. a very anomalous lack of planets orbiting the lowest mass M-dwarf stars.
At my fractal cosmology website you will find a list of 40 successful retrodictions and predictions.
QCD, string theory, SUSY, etc. are Platonic numerology. DSR is fundamental science using the scientific method.
The problem is that DSR is a completely different paradigm than the one you subscribe to, and so you feel threatened and need to dismiss summarily, and without substantive empirical support.
If you like the old paradigm, stick with it. But let others search for a better and more naturally unified understanding of nature.
Robert L. Oldershaw
Discrete Scale Relativity
http://www3.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw
Steve
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMethinks we started harking up the wrong tree when time got ticked off and invaded our bendable, twistable space.
If we take Michelson's static ether, stir it up, let it flow and create the universe, there might be light at the end of the enigma tunnel as it were.
The Universe thusly, is a disturbed field of pure energy seeking the equilibrium which will re-etherize the material universe --- until the next disturbance?
The Dynamic Ether posits that an electron is just an active blob of something (space?) which does not become an electron until it is stopped, extruded or measured, in the same way perhaps, that light is invisible in motion, and if air pressure waves are not stopped by an ear, the tree falls silently in the forest.
Supersymmetry has not been disproven by the experiments which have been conducted to date at the LHC. The supersymmetric particles may be larger than 4 TeV. And it is the nature of science that these particles may never be found. Or, they may be part of that undetectable mass called 'dark matter.' Science often has to back up and start again. The computations of this small part of the Standard Model may have to be recomputed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think, think because we don't know, that we don't know every damn thing. Not yet. Maybe never. And, if we ever do find life in the cosmos, we'll spend an inordinate amount of time figuring out how to kill it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this.
suppose you have a cube in 3 dimensions. you make a projection over a surface and you have a square. you project again and you have a line. you project again the line on a surface and you have a point. If your cube is heavy you can have a bold point!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisyou have a symmetry in some dimensions but if you project under some angle you find an irregular 4 sides graph.we see the stars. we do not know what happens inside them, but we compare the data and we say this or that. we have to see how we register data. the swtar exist, but we need a telescope to see far away from us.
Significant research in the information age is buried beneath much work that is highly speculative. The science magazines are responsible for highlighting significant work because it is not like David Hilbert is going to go around saying, "Guess what, Kurt Godel destroyed my mathematics program". Science magazines and their reporters chose to highlight String Theory and the LHC as the most significant research programs as such they are part of this 'Public Relations" game. A real science reporter goes after the story, just as all reporters. If you want a real science story reply and you will be amazed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthe purely technical level of the SciAm pages is slowly going to the dogs - here the links to the next pages haven't been working for ages and nobody cares - the search function is coming up with results that bear only the faintest resemblence to what one was looking for and main articles don't even show up - what's next? climate items inadvertently linked to holiday on ice?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisactually, the links to the "next page" are hooked to active-x filtering - if you have enabled active-x filtering in your safety menu the links will not work - I fail to see what active-x filtering has to do with a link to the next comments page?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo worry, the SUSY is full of life. She is ghostly, lovely mocking girl, nicely fooling physicists – look, please, in the COOPER-like GHOST-COMOPSITE SUSY: The Gribov Periodical Multiverse - GPM concept, predicting YES-GHOSTLY COMPOSITE SUSY & NO-HIGGS and solving the united DE&DM problems, manifesting the promising GPM with plenty of dark civilizations around us (Gribov 2012. Dark Matter as Pico-Windows to physically equal Multiverse Worlds with Myriads Civilizations Around Us (in extra dimension). Humboldt Univ.: http://www2.hu-berlin.de/leibniz-sozietaet/journal/archive/13_12/01_gribov.pdf. THE GPM density is ~10000000000/cm4 of identical gravity/antigravity Universes with period Lo4 = Compton length of electron. It discloses the 3D-waveguided quantized nature of the SR & Equivalence Principle - GR & Diracian QM. It explains the DE&DM & flatness & bubbles structure (theoretical DE/(DM + OM) ~74%/26%, near to observations); predicts antigravity in the antimatter CERN / positronium Mills lab gravity tests; absence of elementary Sparticles & Higgs bosons, excluded by the 3D-Waveguided rest mass creation mechanism, uniting the waveguided - emergent SR&GR&QM.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat about the K.I.S.S. concept?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKeep It Simple, Stupid!
Ockham's Razor relates KISS with a little more intelligence i.e. all things being equal, the simplest solution is most often the correct one.
Simplicity and mathematical beauty will remain at the core of the New, 'Dark' physics.
Just because the observations are overly complicated, does that mean we should have correspondingly complicated theories to attempt to explain them?
I think a workable, grounded and ultimately elegant theory to explain the new physics will come from someone who is not formally working in the field.
Their thinking will not be influenced (to the same degree) by the theoretical flavour of the decade.
Possibly another Patent Clerk will manage to untangle the huge, 13 dimensional, supersymmetrical ball of string....
"all things being equal, the simplest solution is most often the correct one... Simplicity and mathematical beauty will remain at the core... Just because the observations are overly complicated, does that mean we should have correspondingly complicated theories to attempt to explain them? ... I think a workable, grounded and ultimately elegant theory ... will come from someone who is not formally working in the field.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTheir thinking will not be influenced (to the same degree) by the theoretical flavour of the decade."
you want to look at optool.org then <g>
although it can't be that simple, or could it?
it's either the complete crackpot or the ultimate out-of-the-box; applies a weirdly practical approach to the climate problem which is how I stumbled over it.
In my view the problem with supersymmetry and also with the dark matter hypothesis is that they violated the principle of Occam's razor: Solving a problem associated with the standard model with a hypothesis which actually DOUBLES the number of elementary particles, none of which have been seen, is not a conservative, empirically based procedure. It was taken
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thistoo seriously. Similarly postulating that MOST of the matter in the universe has not been observed is taking ones fantasies too seriously. In the latter case there are serious proposals that the problem is with the theory of gravitation (so-called MONDS theories). Neither of these cases is typical in the history of physics: In the revolutions in physics in the first half of the twentieth century theorists generally made great efforts to postulate a minimum number of postulated new relationships and unobserved entities to account for the observed facts. Their successors have not learned that lesson as well as they should have,
in my opinion.