LHC marches on; ten years and a lonely Higgs (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, September 17, 2018, 19:11 (2237 days ago) @ David Turell

Ten years and only the Higgs. No supersymmetry found:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23931953-000-the-higgs-hunter-has-just-turned-10...

"Then there is the Higgs boson, of course. Its discovery by the LHC in 2012 represented the crowning glory of the standard model of particle physics, our best stab so far at ordering the bric-a-brac of reality. This was the final confirmation of a theoretical idea conceived five years before Armstrong took his one small step – an inspiring validation of purely intellectual human endeavour.

"It is also where the problems start. “There’s an enormous elephant in the room, and that’s that we know the standard model is not a final theory,” says Tara Shears of the University of Liverpool and the LHCb experiment. It fails to explain the nature of phenomena such as dark matter or dark energy, or even why the measured Higgs mass teeters on the very lowest boundary of what’s possible in a stable universe.

"Supersymmetry was the much-vaunted successor to the standard model, predicting a swarm of additional particles to shore it up. “The LHC has meticulously searched in the open as well as in various nooks and crannies for these and has shown that they are not there,” says Ben Allanach of the University of Cambridge, a former supersymmetry adherent.
That is a blow to theorists’ egos, conditioned by a string of successes culminating in the Higgs discovery. It suggests that, whatever better theory is out there, it will not have the beauty of supersymmetry.

"But no one said probing the essence of reality was easy. The LHC has already determined the contents of the universe with greater precision than any machine before it. Planned upgrades and new analysis techniques will further sharpen its eye. Hints of anomalies already seen may yet lead to insights. If things have gone quiet around the LHC, it is the silence of committed, concentrated endeavour. In Shears’s words, “we have to wait, work hard, and see”.

"We’ll hang on in there – happy birthday, LHC."

Comment: It is unfortunate that the supercollider in Texas was killed when partially built because it was twice the size of the LHC. But the LHC is big enough to show supersymmetry if it existed. Beauty in theoretical equations doesn't prove anything .