Before the Big Bang? Supersymmetry dead so far (Origins)

by dhw, Monday, August 29, 2016, 12:35 (2787 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: No disagreement here. It may even be that the Standard Model pattern has to be completely written, and the segment culminating in the Higgs will take on a completely new shape. Some of us might say that patterns are only complete when they are complete.-DAVID: Once the basic standard model was established, every subsequent event supported it. No surprises that didn't fit. But along the way, in the 20th Century, there were surprises (new particles) that had to be studied and understood as part of the pattern. A famous quote is, "who ordered that?" by I.I. Rabi when the muon first appeared:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&...
Once again, to penetrate your thinking, they are currently looking for something new outside the standard model! Higgs completed this circumscribed segment of our knowledge. Whatever is out there will confirm current theories about the next giant step or bring surprises like the muon was. By the way I knew the quote from the reading I did years ago but looked it up just for you to show you how the discoveries tumbled out as atom smashers smashed and folks were surprised. It was one surprise after another, but a pattern appeared they were able to understand. Comprehensible is comprehensible. By chance or from a mind?-Once upon a time, people were able to understand that the sun went round the earth (and they could even see for themselves that it came round again every day). Neither comprehensibility nor segmentary accuracy is a reliable criterion for truth. If there are major problems not solved by the standard model (as there were with the geocentric model of the universe), we must accept the possibility that the standard model may be wrong, and those aspects of it that are correct may have to be reshaped into a new pattern. But that really isn't the point of our discussion, is it? “Who ordered that?” is the real point. And no matter what new discoveries are made, and no matter what pattern is formed, in the composition of the universe as in the history of evolution, you will look for God and find him. Who knows, you may be right.