

LHC results put supersymmetry theory on the spot - sbt
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14680570

======
Jach
Excuse some potential ignorance of the terms here (I'm not a physicist), and
possibly misremembering my history, but is this really incredibly surprising?
BBC mentions supersymmetry seeming "old hat" with younger physicists, is it
going the way of the Copenhagen Interpretation? My knowledge is that,
historically, physicists have expected symmetry and love it when it seems to
be there, but have been let down because reality shows itself to not be quite
fully symmetrical in ways they hoped. They supposed there was reflection
symmetry, but nope. Then the combination of charge and parity, but CP-symmetry
is also broken. CPT-symmetry has held up but there has been some recent
evidence in the past few years suggesting even that is wrong, which is
somewhat disturbing to me. From my armchair I'm beginning to wonder if grand-
symmetry-searchers are going to end up like the people who expect to go a
level beneath quantum and find reality is really classical after all.

~~~
partagas
Incorporating as much symmetry as possible and worry about a possible
symmetry-breaking at a later stage has been a hugely successful path in high-
energy theoretical physics. Hidden variable theories, on the other hand, do
not have such an impressive track record.

As for the article, I think it is terrible and only manages to confuse the
reader. To finish it off with ill-advised sound-bite that makes even a Nobel
laureate sound like a dumbass is in poor taste too.

~~~
jackfoxy
The always outspoken Lubos Motl doesn't think much of the BBC article either
[http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/08/supersymmetry-and-
irration...](http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/08/supersymmetry-and-
irrationality-of-bbc.html)

------
pdelgallego
Any idea on the software stack that they are using to handle the huge amount
of data?

~~~
mctavjb9
The Worldwide LHC Computing Grid: <http://lcg.web.cern.ch/LCG/public/>

It's designed to handle up to 15 petabytes of data per year. Data transfers
from 11 data centers around the world are handled via 10 Gbps point-to-point
optical links.

------
maeon3
To finally get a good picture of what matter is, we have to put our egos aside
and realize that matter is not the primary component of the universe, matter
is a waste byproduct of the violent action going on at the subatomic level
that is moving so quickly that none of our primitive sensors can even observe
it coming and going. Where is it going to? Somewhere else.

The analogy goes like this. When we observe matter, it is like querying a bank
balance and finding $100 in the account. Now if we were to query it thousands
of times a second, we would always find $100 in the account. However, if you
could query the account a million times a second, sometimes you would find the
bank balance as $-1000 or $1000. And even rarer still you find it at
$-1million +1million. Empty space is not empty at all, it is just where the
violent coming-and-going of whatever makes up matter simply averaging out as a
$0 bank balance.

So the energy in our sun, sending out photons is only a waste byproduct of the
mysterious processes that make the universe run.

I have a little pet theory that the universe itself, and the humans are just
bacteria that are hanging out on the exhaust port of some super sentient
being. Our entire universe, the matter we are made up of is simply echos and
ripples of some vast mechanism.

Here's the BBC documentary on antimatter where they explain the notion of
matter and antimatter being a positive and negative bank balance (on average):

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHzbKrg2HIw#t=7m00s>

