April 18, 2019 • 45 mins
What's so super about this symmetry?
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hey, Daniel, how do you convince the government to give
you ten billion dollars? Oh, you just have to promise
an aircraft carrier or two. I think that's right. That's
about the cost of one. But it's also kind of
the cost of a big physics experiment, right, that's true.
Although I didn't personally get the check for ten billion
dollars for the large H. John collider. But you're write
a bunch of world governments all chipped in and spent
(00:30):
a lot of money on a physics experiment, right, And
and I imagined that in each of those countries there
had to be some physicists who went up to the
government officials and said, hey, gave was this money to
discover this thing or that thing? Right? Um? Yeah, Well,
they don't send me to pitch these things to the government,
probably very good reason. I'm unusual in particle physics. I
think most particle physicists like to make more concrete predictions
(00:52):
about what we might find. My view is that we
should just sell the exploration. But I think the one
you're referring to is a kind of a famous area
in particle physics about the storage for the search for supersymmetry.
Exactly a lot of people thought we were going to
find supersymmetry at the large a John Collider. So far nothing.
(01:15):
I think I saw that movie from the eighties, wasn't
it called Despritley Seeking Susie. That's right, supersymmetry is short
and sometimes as Susie Susie here, give me a billion dollars,
I'll find her. Okay, Um, you start looking and I'll
send you a chet. Sounds good. I'll be right back. Hi.
(01:50):
I'm Organ and I'm Daniel, and welcome to our podcast,
Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of I
Heart Radio, in which we take things in the universe
and explain them to you. Things that are super, things
that are not so super, things that are symmetrical, and
things that are asymmetrical, things that are antithetical to everything
you believe in, but actually true. That's right. Today on
(02:12):
the podcast, we're going to talk about a pretty kind
of it's kind of a corner of particle physics, right
and it's it's probably not super well known, but it
is it can have incredible implications for our entire theory
about the universe. Right. Yeah, it's sort of like particle
physicists big hope. Right, it's like a beautiful idea that
(02:32):
everybody really really wishes were true. It's solve a bunch
of problems. It would work really well, it would be gorgeous.
Everybody wants us to find it. Yeah, that's right. Today
on the program, we're going to talk about super symmetry.
What is it? Not just everyday symmetry, not just good symmetry,
(02:55):
not just extra symmetry, but super not just mild mannered Tonian,
superpowered flying symmetry. That's right, supersymmetry. It's supposed to be
the next big thing in physics. You know. It's motivated
by looking at the equations and thinking this doesn't quite
fit together. How can we make this prettier? How can
(03:16):
we find something that's simpler, that hangs together in a
way that that satisfies us aesthetically. You know, that's sort
of surprising how much beauty we search for sometimes in physics. Yeah,
that's it's kind of interesting that physicists think about beauty
in their equations, right, Like, isn't that a subjective quality?
Completely subjective? Absolutely, But you know it's a very important
(03:39):
guiding principle, Like it goes all the way back to
Acam's razor. We prefer simple explanations over complex ones. Right,
If your theory has one moving part, it's simpler than
something that has two moving parts or ten moving parts. Right.
Even also just in your life, right, you prefer simpler
explanations to answer the questions you have. Right, So is
it more about elegant Do you think like that's an
(04:01):
elegant solution or an elegant answer in that it's it's
simple and directly to the point. Yeah, And I think
it goes to the questions we have as humans. You know,
I want to know how was the universe put together?
And I'd love if that answer was short, you know,
if it was simple. If the answer to the question
like how is the universe organized is like a huge
(04:23):
list of what every single particle in the universe is
supposed to do, then that's not really simplification. Right. In
some sense, the search for simplicity is inherent. It's core
to physics, right. That's what physics is is take everything
we observe and describe in terms of a few equations. Right. Well,
I mean you're you're basically looking for laws, right, I
mean that's the idea you know, the idea of a
(04:46):
law is is something that's applicable to many situations and
not just specific situations, right, exactly. You want you want
rules that generalize, Right. You want to measure something here
and know you can apply it later. You want to say, oh,
I studied this baseball's ocean, now I know how the
next baseball is going to move. Right. You don't want
to a rule that applies a different rule applies to
every baseball. Yeah, Like you can't have a government that
(05:08):
runs with a huge book that says, all right, if
a guy named Whorehead does a podcast and he does
this and that's not allowed, or if he does this,
that's not allowed. But then if it's a guy named Daniel,
then he can't do this or that of that. You
sort of want rule that applies to a general rule
that applies to everyone. YEA, Well, you know, I wouldn't
mind having special rule just for me. Daniel doesn't have
(05:28):
to pay taxes, Daniel can drive as fast as he likes.
That would be nice. But you're right, it's not a
sustainable way to do it. And and it's not just
not sustainable, you know, I think the whole job of
physics is to come up with generalizable laws. And so
we've done this a lot of times in physics. We've said, hey,
look at this um electricity is kind of similar to magnetism.
(05:50):
Can we simplify things and describe it in terms of
just one idea electro magnetism. Oh look, you know this
piece fits together with that piece. It turns out, you know,
it's it's all part of the same thing, right, or
like a discovering F equals m A. And you find
that this lab applies to a whole bunch of things,
and it helps you in many many situations, right, yeah, exactly,
(06:12):
you know, and we do this a lot. We just
were stumbling over stuff in physics and we don't necessarily
know what connects to what. So, like, you know, it's
like finding the front of the elephant, and then a
hundred years later you discover, oh, elephants have butts too,
And then finally somebody says, wait, put them together. You
get a whole animal. Right, it makes much more sense.
Elephant heads and elephant butts are not separate ideas. Um,
(06:32):
I want to be the guy, the person who wins
that Nobel prize the discovery of the elephant but yeah, exactly.
You can put that on your tombstone. Um. But that's
the idea, is like connecting different observations that happened to
you know, happen at different times or different places, and
realizing they're part of the whole. And so that's the
driving ideas. Let's look at what we know and look
(06:54):
for patterns, look for symmetry, symmetries that we can be
used to simplify things. So that's what this supersymmetry is
all about. It it's about simplifying the equations of the universe. Right.
It's like finding like a finding a kind of another
set of patterns that make it easier to understand or
easier to um put together right exactly. And it's a
(07:15):
theoretical exercise, right you say, hey, I notice these patterns
in the universe, and then you can test that. You
can say is this pattern real? Is it true? If
it is, then I expect to find this new particle
for example. The patterns usually predict something new, and amazingly
sometimes that works, like that's exactly what happened with the
Higgs Boson. Higgs and other folks were like, hey, look,
the universe doesn't quite make sense. This is weird wrinkle
(07:38):
that wrinkled goes away if you add one more particle,
and then we actually found the Higgs boson. So like
this strategy has worked. It's not just like something we
you know, enjoy doing that has worked, right, Well, it's
it's a it's a pretty cool word, supersymmetry. And and
just to be sure, it is one word. Like you
you don't write superspace symmetry. You write it like Superman.
(07:59):
It's like supersymmetry. Yeah, we have long meetings about punctuation
and particle physics, you know, whether to hyphenate where a
common goes. And because people come from all over the world,
they have different ideas about how to do this kind
of stuff. But yeah, we all agree supersymmetry is one word.
And it's very commonly abbreviated as susie s U s
WA because supersymmetries were just way too long to say. Right. Well,
(08:22):
I'm sure a lot of people know susie or two um,
but we were wondering how many people out there had
heard of this word supersymmetry. I know, it's basically one
of the most important motivators for governments to spend billions
of dollars on an experiment. So you think maybe there
was a pr campaign, Maybe people know what this is,
maybe they have an opinion about it. And so, as usual,
Daniel went out there and ask people in the street
(08:44):
if they knew what the word supersymmetry means. Here's what
people had to say. Yeah, I've heard about it, but
I don't know what it is. I've heard about it
in some lectures I was listening to from from from
Fineman I think, and Paul to Rock No no idea.
Who would you guess just from the name, I would
(09:06):
have to do something symmetrical, thanks very much from Big
Bang Theory Ya from the TV show. Just heard it,
but I don't really know what it means to be.
To guess, what do you think big supersymmetry might be?
Probably has to do with symmetry and how you make
things easier in science, probably because usually like everything that
symmetrical makes it easier because you can divide and a
(09:26):
half when it's too geometry, or it's just like easier
to apply some rules and equations on it. So I
guess it would just be like a simplification of something
really complicated. Okay, awesome, I don't know what that means.
But my guess is like something about math, like thanks
very much, assumes something is symmetrical, or like something is
(09:48):
like balanced, or even maybe no, no, never, no, I
don't have to guess what it might be. What do
you think it might be symmetrical? So, as usual, the
Big Bang Theory has educated Americans and what a word
is without explaining what it actually means. I bet you
plus love and hate that show like you probably you
(10:09):
probably don't love the writing or the way that physicists
are portrayed. But at the same time, you know, it's
sort of educated so many people in the words and
the kind of maybe a little bit of the concepts
in particle physics. Right right as they're laughing and making
fun of physicists, they accidentally learned a few pieces of vocabulary.
There is a positive side of that. You're right, you
wouldn't You wouldn't let people laugh at you too if
(10:32):
they ended up learning something. Isn't that the premise of
this entire podcast? Listen laugh learn something? Anyway? Well, there
you go. You're right up there with Sheldon and and
I don't even even know the other characters. But no, no,
I would totally humiliate myself if everybody in the world
could learn a little bit more physics. Whatever you want,
you want to do a dunk tank, you want me
(10:54):
to wear a silly costume, sign me up on man.
That should totally be our live traveling show for this podcast.
You have a dunk tank with like if you answer
a physics question correctly, you get the dunk Daniel with.
You have like a short Anger's dunk tank. You know, oh,
like is he dunked or is he not done? Behind
a cave with like a box and people throw things
(11:16):
and then it's all connected to some quantum particle and
you may or may not get wet mm hmm. So
I guess that will be my sacrifice for the art. Right,
That's how I'm going to make sure that I'm suffering
for our art. Right. That's good because my creative partner
is a joy to worker. Good. He sounds like a
nice guy. He's an amazing, amazing um anyway. But yeah,
(11:43):
so not a lot of people have heard of the concept.
I mean, everyone knows what super beans, and I imagine
a lot of most people out there know what symmetry means.
But when you put it together, suddenly it's a it's
a new word, right. Yeah. You could hear people trying
to figure it out on the fly, speculating what it
might mean based on zero knowledge and just the atomology.
And yeah, so nobody had an idea supersymmetry needs to
(12:05):
be better sold, right right, Well, let's get into it
all right, um, And for me, you know, I think
we just let's talk about what symmetry means in the
first place. I mean, I know that in the common usage,
symmetry just means that it's kind of like a like
a mirror image, like something symmetrically something else. If it's
if it looks the same as if you were looking
at it in a mirror. Right. Yeah. It's all about patterns, right,
(12:27):
is can you do two things look similar? Right? And Um?
For particles, we find a lot of these patterns among
the particles. And what we do is we instead of
thinking about the individual particles the way you were talking
about individual laws for each person, we try to think
about the particles together in groups. So for example, you
have the electron, and then you have the electrons, antiparticle,
(12:48):
the positron. Right, we don't really think about the electron
and the positron is separate particles. We think about the
we think of them as two sides of a coin, right,
the positive and negative version of this part particle, and
we think of it as one concept. It's kind of
like a it's the same except you flip a sign
or you know. It's kind of like if you you
put them electron in front of the mirror, one of
(13:09):
them would be spinning one way, either one would be
spinning kind of the other way. Right. Yeah, it's like
you don't think about the heads separately from the tails
of a coin, right, There just different sides of the
same coin, literally, And we think about particles the same way.
And because every particle seems to have an antiparticle, you know,
with some funny exceptions like the photon, that it's a
very useful strategy. We notice this relationship between positrons and electrons,
(13:33):
between muans and anti muons, and so that's a really
important symmetry and it it helps us ask questions. Right,
We're like, well, why is there this symmetry? What does
it mean? We think it reveals something deep about the universe.
We still don't know the answer to that one, right,
Like why do particles have antiparticles. We have no idea,
but I think it's an important clue about something fundamental
(13:54):
about the universe. So we're always looking for these patterns,
not just because it helps us simplify and right thing
down more quickly, but because we were hopeful that their
clues about what's going on on the deeper level. Right. So, okay,
so that's what symmetry means. It's it's kind of like
um an electron having a mirror image of itself called
the anti electron. That's right. But symmetry works in lots
(14:15):
of different ways, like there are other symmetries in particle physics.
If you remember the episode where we introduced sort of
the standard model, the electron has the anti electron, but
also has symmetries in other ways, Like there's the mun
and the taw. These particles are exactly the same as
the electron, but they're heavier, right, So the electron has
two kinds of symmetries. That's a symmetry as well, But
(14:37):
they're not they're not like they don't weigh the same,
they just sort of act the same, that's right. There
is a difference, right, So they're not the identical particle.
But there's a pattern there because the electron is not
the only one with too heavier cousins, right, The neutrino
is too heavier cousins. The up coork has too heavier cousins,
the down cork is too heavier cousins. There's something going
on where every particle has two heavier versions of itself.
(14:59):
We call the flavors. Sometimes, because we're not great in
particle physics about coming with new names, adopt an existing word,
which is very confusing. Wait, so that's that's a symmetry
as well, these kind of heavier versions of an electron.
Those are absolutely really what how is that symmetric? Because
you know it imagine symmetry means like the same or
(15:21):
mirror image. Yeah, it's just you have to change your
definition of what the mirror means. Right. So in the
case of positive and negative electrons, your mirror is changing
the charge, right, it's changing from positive to negative. But
that mirror can have lots of different kinds of reflections.
Right in this case, an electron and a muon and
a town. We think of its just different varieties of
the same kind of particle. So sort of like a
(15:43):
three way mirror. These particles are definitely related. Right, an
electron is much more close relationship with the muon than
it does with like corks. But why why do you
call it a symmetry? Is it in the equation? Something
about the equations that somehow you know what I mean?
You can write all those particles, all those particles have
the same kinds of interactions, right, they interact with the
(16:03):
same forces. Uh, they interact with the forces in very
similar ways. And so when you write down the equations,
instead of writing down here, how here's how an electron works,
Here's how a mun works, Here's how a tow works.
Here the laws for those particles, we just write down
one set of laws because they follow the same laws.
There's a little bit of a difference. Each one has
a different mass, right, but the laws, the basic structure
(16:24):
of how it works is the same. Is it kind
of like different solutions to the same equation? Or Well,
what we don't know is why we have them, right,
you're sort of suggesting like the reason we have three, right, Well,
we don't know the answer to that. We don't know
why there is more than one at all, Like why
does this symmetry exist? And then we don't know why
there are three in a four or seven or two. Right,
(16:45):
those are deep questions. When you discover symmetry, it's helpful because,
as we said, it gives you a clue about some
deep questions, but doesn't always give you the answer, right,
sort of raises the question. So in this case, when
when you say symmetry, you kind of mean like an
imperfect copy. Yeah, exactly, and the perfection there can vary, right,
Like the positron of the electron are really exactly the
(17:06):
same except for the charge um. In the case of
the electron, the mu and the too, they're very similar.
There are some differences, the most important one is the mass.
So you can have more or less perfect symmetries. None
of these symmetries are exact, so just sort of like
guiding patterns that we used to organize how how we
write down the equations. Okay, so if you had to,
(17:28):
if you had to christen this thing another name, would
you still call it some symmetry or would you maybe
use another word? Oh? I think symmetry is a nice word.
You know, symmetry shows like aesthetic purity, right, I mean,
when you're looking at art, you like symmetry. But when
you look at a face. Scientists have like discovered right
that symmetric faces are considered the most beautiful. So I
think there's a connection between symmetry and beauty and simplicity.
(17:51):
So I like the word symmetry. Yeah, No, I think
it's it's pretty nice. It's hard to spell for her
young students. I've I've seen a creatively spelled in lots
of different way is. But it's a nice word. Well,
hold on, I'm still stuck a little bit in symmetry.
So why is symmetry Plano mild manner symmetry? Why is
that um important in the equations of physics because you
(18:14):
see it or it's it's something that helps you solve
the equations. Well, it's for the same reason that you
um you said earlier about like writing laws. You wouldn't
want to write down a different law for everybody. You'd notice, Hey,
I'm rinning now all the same laws, except I'm just
substituting Jorge some places and Daniel in other places. Maybe
I should just write one law for everybody, right, And
(18:34):
so that's what we're doing with symmetries, is we're trying
to find these patterns to simplify things. We could say, hey, look,
the same laws apply to the electron and the muan
and the tow. We just need to tweak this a
little bit, and the same rules apply. So that's what
we're going for. Maybe, Okay, So maybe when you when
you say symmetry, you actually means like same rules apply. Yeah,
Or you could think of it like a pattern, right,
(18:55):
all right, So it's kind of like you might say,
like a living in the US is very symmetric to
living in Suitland in that blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah, and it's kind of like it's it's the
magrick thing that it's sort of like the same rules apply,
or there's some sort of pattern between living here in
the vein in Switzerland. Yeah. I don't know if there's
much in common between living in Switzerland living in the US.
(19:16):
I've lived in both places. They're pretty different experiences. Um,
I guess they both eat yogurt. Super symmetric. It's not
a super symmetric analogy, Daniel, Exactly right. That was not
a super analogy about symmetry. It's an underwhelming symmetry, yeah, exactly.
But you know, you could look for example, what are
the laws of different countries, And you might say, hey, look,
(19:37):
there is these underlying things everybody wants to the value
of property and everyone who wants life, and everyone wants liberty,
and you could say those are inherent about being human.
Is something about forming a human society that makes people
want these things, and so we should encode those as
the bedrock principles of humanity. Right, so we call those
human rights. You so and and and you've learned something
(19:58):
about humanity that way by identifying in these core principles. Right.
So it's kind of like a perspective. It's like when
you say you want the laws of physics to be symmetric,
you're saying you want them to be kind of a universal,
and you want them to be applicable to many different things,
and you want them to not very on a Willie
Neely basis, wanted to be kind of rock solid. Yeah, exactly.
(20:21):
Symmetries allow us to write these things more compactly, write
to write down fewer laws because we identify patterns and
so the same laws can apply to different kinds of phenomena. Right, Okay,
So that's kind of regular mild manner. Clark Kent glasses wearing.
Symmetry is some sort of like a perspective on the
laws of physics that say that it's, um, it's sort
(20:42):
of applicable everywhere. So then um, but now they're supersymmetry.
Are you ready to put spandex on the look like
the clothes off and see what he's wearing underneath? When
making a family friendly podcast, Well, he's taking his clothes up,
but he's got an outfit on underneath. Folks. Okay, well
it's get into supersymmetry, but first let's take a quick break. Okay,
(21:15):
so that's a that's a pretty good breakdown of symmetry,
which is, um, it's kind of like the perspective that
things should, um, they have a pattern in nature and
things should have fundamental laws that don't change. Is because
you move from one place to the other or from
one particle to the other. Right, Yeah, it's yeah exactly.
It's like if you notice, hey, there's sort of two
different kinds of things. What can we find that relates them?
(21:38):
How can we think of them the same way? Right?
Do we have to have two different totally separate categories
or can we say there's a relationship between them and
understand them and sort of in the context of a
larger idea. Right, it's like, why do we have Democrats
and Republicans? Oh, they're both just political parties, right, that's
sort of the symmetry between that. Okay, so then now
let's get into the topic of the podcast. Um supersymmetry.
(22:01):
So that's like the regular symmetry, but more so or
I guess the question is like, what are an all
symmetries super? Like? What's special about supersymmetries? Supersymmetry is called
super because the folks that named it were like grandiose
in their ideas. Um, it's called super because it sort
of encompasses the whole set of particles. Here's the idea.
(22:24):
The idea is that we noticed that there are kind
of two kinds of particles out there that we've discovered.
There's the particles that make up stuff, right, the matter particles,
electrons and corks and all that kind of stuff. Those
particles have a technical name called fermions. Then there's a
different kind of particle. These are These are particles that
describe the forces. So the ones that like are responsible
(22:46):
for electromagnetism, the photon or the weak nuclear force the
W and Z boson or the strong force the glue on.
These particles are different. We call them bosons, and the
difference between them is technical and we don't need to
get deeply into it. We have these two different kinds
of particles, the fermions which are matter particles, and the bosons,
which are the force particles, and I always get them confused.
(23:07):
So maybe for this podcast, let's just call the matter
particles and force particles. About that? Sure that sounds good,
a matter particles and force particles, And that's odd to
people who are like, that's weird that we have two
different kinds, And they thought, what if what if there's
sort of a symmetry, right, what if there's a connection,
Like what if every force particle had some sort of
(23:29):
matter particle that was like its reflection, right, imagine like
this is the mirror now, force versus matter. What if
every matter particle had a corresponding force particle and every
forest particle had a corresponding matter particle. Wouldn't that be
pretty right? Wouldn't that be a nice connection between these two?
Otherwise just disparate groups of particles, These just two lists
(23:50):
that we have. Yeah, well that's weird, isn't it, because
force and matter are so different. But you're saying that
in particle physics. In quantum physics, you just treat them
all a particles. We do treat them as particles. Yeah,
and forced particles and matter particles we treat them a
little bit different in quantum field theory. Um. But we'd
like to see the connection between them, right. We have
like this one group of matter particles and this other
(24:11):
group of force particles, and we're wondering, like, why do
we have two different kinds, and why is there this
one list longer than that other list? Is there a
way we can sort of fit them all together into
one grand symmetry that I dare say a super symmetry? Right? Oh,
I see, So, like the matter particles are maybe symmetric
among themselves, and the forced particles are maybe symmetric among themselves.
(24:33):
And so you've always had these two groups, and so
you're wondering, are they maybe just reflections of each other
across board? Yeah? Exactly the problem is that there isn't
really an easy way to make them correspond to each other.
Like there's no forced particle that corresponds to the electron
and there's no like matter particle that corresponds to the
photon for example. So if this is gonna work, you
(24:53):
have to invent a reflection particle for each one. Right,
so the every matter particle have to invent a new
force particle that we haven't yet found, and for every
force particle you have to invent a new matter particle
that we haven't yet seen. Wait, so like, um, if
I have a matter particle like the electron or like
a cork, you're saying that if there if there are supersymmetry,
(25:17):
then that means that there's a forced particle that is
just like the cork or the electron, but it's a
forced particle and something about a change that makes it
a forced particle and not a matter particle. Exactly, if
you have that symmetry, there should be a reflection for
every particle, just like well, we know there are particles
and antiparticles. So if there's some particle out there, you say, well,
it should have an antiparticle, right in the same way
(25:40):
we say, well the electron, there should be some forced
particle that corresponds to it, and there should be some
matter correspond particle that corresponds to the photon. Why couldn't
you have what couldn't the photon be the supersymmetric version
of the electron? Do you know what I mean? Like,
why can't we just match them up? Well, we want
them to have the same mass, right, because that would
be the nicest symmetry. And so the photon of the
electron have nothing like the same mass, and then what
(26:03):
would match up with the muan right, and what we
match up with the tow So we want sort of
all the symmetries in the matter particles to be reflected
in the symmetries and the force particles, um. And then
there's a bunch of other technical reasons why that just
can't work. Well, the important thing is that they have
really silly names, right, That's the away from this exactly.
(26:24):
So what they did was they saying, well, we can't
just invent a bunch of crazy new names for all
these particles, right, we need a name for the particle
that's the force version of the electron, and the particle
that's the force version of the cork, and the particle
that's the matter version of the photon. So they came
up with a rule for how to name the reflection particles.
And the rule is if you take a matter particle
(26:45):
and you want to name its force reflection, right, the
particle the force particle. That's it's sort of supersymmetric partner's hypothetical. Hypothetically,
we haven't discovered them. Like if there's a Swiss version
of korhe, it would be named this. That's right. And
what you do is you put an S in front
of the name, right, so you have a particle. The
(27:06):
super symmetric version is a sparticle. And so for example,
the electron, it's super symmetric version. The fourth version of
it is the selectron. Why is it one s and
not two s? Is? You know, like supersymmetry should be
like this selectron. And that's why because we don't want
(27:27):
to be sounding like all the time in our meetings.
It gets pretty silly, like we have the top cork
and it's super symmetric version is the stop cork, right,
or the bottom cork and it's verse. It's super symmetric
version is the spottom cork. Right. Wow, that sounds like
(27:48):
like an invitation for funny meetings exactly. Um, everybody who
learns these rules has a good giggle over it. For
a few weeks and then it just becomes a part
of your day. Um and and and then in the
other direction, if you have a force particle like the photon,
and you need a name for the matter version of it,
(28:08):
you add eno to the end. So, for example, a
photon is a force particle, it's a matter version would
be a photino. So if there's a Daniel in Switzerland
and you're wondering, what would the Daniel be named in
the US, it would be Daniel Leno. Daniel Leno, Yeah, exactly,
Daniel Leno and sorehe that's the super symmetric version of
(28:34):
this podcast Daniel universe. But can you can you just
do that? Can you just post the existence of a
force particle you've never seen? Wouldn't that? Isn't that weird?
(28:56):
Isn't that like making up a whole new force in
the universe? Exactly it is. But that's what you want
to do, right when you make a when you observe
a pattern, the next thing to do is to say, well,
if this pattern holes, if it really is true, what
can I predict that hasn't been seen before. That's how
you test it, right, That's how they That's how the
Higgs boson was verified, they saw this pattern. The pattern
(29:18):
is complete. Only of the Higgs boson exists, and they
looked for it found it. Boom pattern probably correct. In
the case of supersymmetry. You say, well, what if every
particle has this supersymmetric reflection. If so, that all these
other particles should exist. And it's crazy because what you're
doing is doubling the number of particles. Right, you say, Okay,
we have twelve matter particles and five for particles. Now
(29:41):
I'm going to say we have twenty four particles and
ten particles. Right, So it's um, it's a big prediction. Yeah,
it's It's kind of like saying, hey, I have a theory.
I think that for every person in the US, there's
an there's a Swiss version in Switzerland of that person.
Everyone in in Switzerland has a as version in the
US and n't seen any of them yet. Yeah, they're
(30:05):
all hidden somewhere underneath, underneath, and exactly. And when you
make a theory of physics, you have to explain all
of that. You have to say, here's something you could
do to prove my theory is correct. Here's a prediction
I can make. You will go and find this particle,
and you also have to explain why we haven't seen
it yet, right, because if they're all these other particles
out there in the universe that the universe can make,
(30:26):
you have to explain why we didn't see them yet.
And the standard answer was, until very recently, the standard
answer was why they were a little too heavy. That those,
for some reason, the supersymmetric version of our particles, were
all too heavy to just like hang out in the universe.
They didn't last for very long because they were so heavy.
So you have to give me ten billion dollars to
(30:48):
build a particle collider so I can create the energy
density needed to make these particles that would then prove
my crazy theory, right, which would then prove my crazy
theory if we had found it. Yeah, you're like, it's
not my fault that you can't see them. They they're
just kind of a little overweight. Yeah, exactly, they're a
little overweight. And that was the key that, right there
(31:08):
is the crux of it. We had to say, all right,
if you give us ten billion dollars, will build a
collider that's such and such big that can search for
particles up to a certain energy, because remember, the bigger
the collider, the more energy you're pouring into it, right,
because you can push the particles faster and faster, which
means the heavier new particles you can make. It's directly correlation,
like the more money you spend, the bigger the collider,
(31:31):
the heavier particles you can make. Than The question was,
is this collider big enough to find supersymmetry? Is supersymmetry
sort of in the next chunk of unexplored territory that
can be searched by this collider. Okay, so that that's
what supersymmetry is. It's the theory that all the particles
(31:51):
have these crazy twins hidden out there in the universe,
and so if you give me ten billion dollars, I'm
pretty I'm pretty sure I'm gonna find them. That's right.
And it was a fun idea, and it was invented
in the seventies and eighties and played with and um
people thought, hey, this is kind of cool. It's cute mathematically,
but it's kind of a big prediction, you know. But
then people notice that not only was acute mathematically, but
(32:13):
it actually solved a different problem we have in there
in physics. And so if it was true, it would
be like really nice. It would like tie up a
bunch of different loose ends all at the same time. Oh,
I see it's Um, it's a crazy theory, but it's
the answer to more than one puzzle in physics. Yeah.
For example, one puzzle we have in physics is like,
(32:34):
why does the Higgs boson have the mass that it does.
We don't know why. Um, we can calculate what massive
should have, and the calculation is kind of complicated. But
the short version of the story is that force particles
make them make it push the mass in one direction,
and matter particles push in the other direction. And so
and these and these are really big pushes right there,
(32:55):
push it by by huge amounts. And so the fact
that the two sort of balance out to give us
a Higgs Boson that's not like ridiculously heavy. It seems
like a big coincidence. You know. It's like, Um, you
have two different numbers that happen to almost cancel out,
and you think, oh, there's no relationship between them. It's
a coincidence. Well, if every force particle has a matter particle,
(33:19):
then it's very natural for them to cancel each other.
Out because there's a symmetry there, right, and everything that's
pushing one way, it gets automatically pushed the other way.
So it would sort of solve that problem, like in
a really nice, nice way. Like when I first heard
that idea of was like, Oh, that's clever, that's beautiful.
That's like a really nice natural explanation, right, because a
(33:39):
coincidence in the universe. You guys don't like coincidences, Yeah,
coincidences beg the question You're like, is that really a
coincidence or is there an explanation? Right? Um, It's like
if you discover, hey, this supermarket seems to sell the
same number of hot dogs and hot dog buns every year,
I wonder why. Right, Well, it turns out people buy
(34:00):
hot dogs and hot dog buns together for a reason, right,
They're connected. Um, And so you want to discover these
apparent coincidences because they tell you something about the universe
or about hot dogs. It's kind of like if you
if you find a if you do find an identical
Jorge in Switzerland, you'd be like, that's too much of
(34:20):
a coincidence. They must have there must be something going
on that somehow split them apart. And put them in
each country. Exactly. If I ever went to Switzerland and
met soorhe, then thank you, Um, yeah, exactly, I would
think that that's a clue. Right, there's something going on.
(34:41):
And so that's the idea of supersymmetry, and if it's
solved a bunch of problems, it might even explain dark matter, right,
And so it's a really it's a tantalizing idea because
they could they could kill a lot of birds with
one stone, kill a lot of matter and forces and
one Yeah, you can win five Nobel Prizes with one discovery. Wow.
All right, let's get into whether or not this is
(35:03):
actually real and if we you have found evidence for it.
But first let's take a quick break. All right, So
that's supersymmetry. We um, we broke it down a little bit,
(35:25):
and you said it might explain dark matter. What does
that mean? Well, there's a particle. A one of the
super symmetric particles is something that doesn't turn into anything else.
It just sort of hangs out because it's the lightest
one can't turn into anything else. And so if it exists,
it might be the dark matter particle. Right, So it
might be the dark matter is made of particles, and
(35:47):
the particles is made out of might be super symmetric particles. Wow,
is it the super symmetric version of the photon? Like
that would be cool? Yeah, exactly. The opposite of light
is dark matter. Let's that's that's beautiful. We're writing right
there there you go. See you're searching for beauty in
your answers. Right. You don't want just any answer, you
want poetry, right, and that's what this is for us.
(36:08):
Symmetry is the physicist version of poetry, except it doesn't rhyme. Oh,
I know it doesn't rhyme because all the particles and
with the same kenoes you write a pretty silly song
using only supersymmetric particle names. Yeah exactly. Okay, So let's
get into whether it's real or not. So is this
theory real? Have they found evidence for it? We have
(36:29):
exactly zero evidence that supersymmetry is really exactly we have
symmetric So in a way, you sort of confirmed the
beauty of the universe. No, the only thing supersymmetry has
going for it is its elegance. Is its beauty is
that it would solve these problems. But you know, nature
is not interested in the ideas that we think are beautiful.
There are lots of gorgeous theories out there that turned
(36:51):
out to not be true. And so we you know,
a lot of people said we would find supersymmetry and
we turned on the Large Change and collider um, but
we didn't. They thought you would find like these crazy
hypothetical particles to just start popping out of the collider. Yeah,
and it's pretty exciting when you turn on a new collider,
a collider and an energy nobody has ever collided particles
(37:14):
that before. You could discover something in minutes, right, It
really is like landing on a new new planet that
nobody's ever been to before, nobody's ever created collisions of
this energy. So it could be the first time you
had enough energy to make these particles, and it could
be that they're just like you know, flew out of
the collider like crazy. So the first few days the
Large Hadron Collider, everybody was very excited, Right, We're like,
(37:36):
what's in the data, what's in the data? Did you
discover supersymmetry? Is it there? Is it there? And there
was a big community of theorists who really believed that
we would find it and that we would find it
very early on, but we didn't. So far. The only
thing we found that the large Hadron collider that we
didn't know about before was the Higgs boson. Huge triumph,
but um. A lot of people sold supersymmetry as a
(37:59):
potential discovery of the large hGe On collider and so
far not there. Maybe they were just hedging in case
they didentified the Higgs. They're like, Wow, we might not
find the Higgs, but we might find Susie. Yeah, it
could have been that we didn't see the Higgs, right.
We weren't guaranteed right, We didn't know um. And one
question is like how far away is Susie? How heavy
are these particles? Are these particles real and part of
(38:21):
the nature, but the large hGe On collider is just
not quite big enough to find them? Right? Or is
it that there there's like super far away and you'd
have to build a collider the size of the Solar
System to make them. We don't really have a good
answer to that question. We don't really good theoretical clues
that tell us how big the collider has to be.
The theory doesn't tell you what's the maximum, Like you
(38:44):
can just keep going. The theory doesn't tell you, well,
if you haven't found them by this mask, then they
probably don't exist. Right, the most beautiful version of supersymmetry
all the particles had the same mass as their super particles.
Now we know that's not true because there if the
electron had a superparticle that had the same mass, we
would have found it already. I like how you say
the most beautiful, Like you guys have beauty contest for theories, simplest,
(39:10):
most poetic theories, right, Um, you know, and uh, some
of these some of these series look great in the
swimsuit competition. They stumble when they asked them of geopolitics,
but you know, they do their best, and then the
judges flip a sign saying ten seven. You can have
(39:33):
versions of supersymmetry where the supersymmetric particles are like, way, way,
way too heavy for us to ever practically make them
in any collider we would build, So we're not guaranteed. Yeah,
so there's different flavors of supersymmetry, and some of them
are more super than others. Yeah, there's a huge number
of supersymmetric theories, and we've ruled out a bunch of them,
(39:54):
but there's a huge number left, so you can't really
kill supersymmetries. It's always got another rock for it itself
to hide under. Um. But as I was saying before,
there was a controversy because people thought maybe the theory
community was too bullish on whether the LATEC was big
enough to find supersymmetry. And now that we didn't, like,
you know, should they rethink how they made those arguments
(40:18):
because we're in the beginning stages of arguing for the
next collider, right, and people are wondering, what this wouldn't
be big enough to find supersymmetry. How do you know
you were wrong last time? Should we believe you this time? Right? Well,
I don't know if I told you, but I once
gave the keynote address at a supersymmetry conference. Did you
give us super talk? It was you give two super talks?
It was it was super ansymmetric. Did you give it
(40:41):
forward and then backwards? That's right? I walked down stage
and then I walked off stage. But no, yeah, yeah,
I talked a lot of physicists that they're physicists there,
and they were, you know a lot of them were
like really convinced that supersymmetry was is true, and and
I was like, how do you what makes you so
confident or when? And it was really sort of came
(41:03):
down to a sense of faith or a sense of
like like you said, like the like this believe that
the universe has to be beautiful and it has to
be symmetric in this way. Yeah, a lot of people
who bought that story. Personally, me not interested. I think ridiculous.
I've never spent any of my professional scientific energy searching
(41:24):
for supersymmetry, and I have no interest in it. Really.
Why what makes you so down on it? There's a
few reasons. Um. One is it's a bit too complex
for me. I mean, you're predicting a lot of different particles, right,
and it's sort of a big it's a big thing
to predict. Um. I prefer a sort of simpler, more
compact answer. Um. And But I think more fundamentally, I'm
(41:46):
not into particle physics to confirm theoretical ideas. I'm not.
My job is not to say yes or no to
the ideas some folks have in their office. My interesting
particle physics is to explore my scientific fantasy, is not
to discover something that Professor x y Z predicted, But
to discover something weird unanticipated, it's something that makes Professor
(42:07):
x y Z go what that can't happen? Um, That's
why I'm an experimentalist, because I think I see it
as a as an exploration, right, right, But you need
the theories to tell you if what you're seeing is
weird or not. Right, Like, if there weren't any theories,
you wouldn't know it is weird. Well, you can discover
a particle that nobody's ever seen before, right and say, oh,
what's this? How does it work? What does it do?
(42:29):
How heavy is it? How does it interact? Right? What
does that mean? And you know, then the theorists can
get started understanding how it fits into the other patterns.
But you can definitely have experiment be the leader. Right.
There was a period in particle physics earlier this century
where basically every time you turned on the collider you
found a new particle and nobody knew what they were
and it was a it was a huge mess, and
it was called the particles Zoo And that one must
(42:49):
have been really fun, you know. Um, these days I
just want to just like fuzzy little particles actually I'm
totally anti zoo. Um things, those are crazy. They're locking
up these beautiful animals and cages. Um. That's the topic
of a different podcast. So my interest in particle physics
is more about looking for something unanticipated than box checking
(43:11):
the ideas of other people. Um. But it's a huge area,
like some big fraction of particle physicists search for supersymmetry. Right,
But you're saying that you're telling me earlier that some
people a lot of people that are have given up.
They're like, all right, forget it, it's not real. M. Yeah. Well,
a lot of people feel like if supersymmetry is going
to be real and it's going to be natural and
(43:32):
beautiful and explain all these things, it has to be
light that you can't have super duper heavy particles. They
don't like the versions of supersymmetry with the particles are
too heavy for us to have found them. Yeah. Um,
And so I think a good number of people have
given up on it or are thinking about other ideas well.
(43:53):
I certainly hope that you guys find that the universe
is beautiful and has perfect facial structure, the symmetric and
wins A lot of beauty contests. Well, I'm sure that
whatever we find about the universe, it will be beautiful,
and it will be symmetric, and it will be incredible.
It just might not be the idea of beauty that
we went out looking for. You know, when we go
(44:14):
out and look for things on other planets, we expect
to find incredible, mind blowing things. We just don't predict
them in advance, right, and we embrace that. We look
forward to being surprised by nature. That's the whole idea
of science. Yeah. I think what you're saying is giving.
They should give you the billion dollars and not this theories.
My checking account is open, so people free to send
(44:34):
me checks for billions of dollars. Yes, that's how you agree?
All right? What's our Veno account? Daniel Venoll and Daniel
and Jorge dot com. Yeah exactly, or you know, I
accept gold blue Yon also. You know that's fine. Great.
Do you accept menos and zenos? Exactly? Only a lot
of them, though it takes a big pile and mean
a certain arrangement. All right, thank you very much. That's
(44:57):
a supersymmetry. I hope you guys learned what it is
and it's so super and it's something that we might discover.
So maybe by the time this podcast comes out, we
will have a hint of supersymmetry. Or maybe it will
take another hundred years. Nobody knews until then, See you
next time. If you still have a question after listening
(45:22):
to all these explanations, please drop us a line. We'd
love to hear from you. You can find us at Facebook, Twitter,
and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge That's one Word, or
email us at Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain
the Universe is a production of I Heart Radio. From
More podcast from my Heart Radio visit the I Heart
(45:44):
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Hey, Daniel, how do you convince the government to give
you ten billion dollars? Oh, you just have to promise
an aircraft carrier or two. I think that's right. That's
about the cost of one. But it's also kind of
the cost of a big physics experiment, right, that's true.
Although I didn't personally get the check for ten billion
dollars for the large H. John collider. But you're write
a bunch of world governments all chipped in and spent
(00:30):
a lot of money on a physics experiment, right, And
and I imagined that in each of those countries there
had to be some physicists who went up to the
government officials and said, hey, gave was this money to
discover this thing or that thing? Right? Um? Yeah, Well,
they don't send me to pitch these things to the government,
probably very good reason. I'm unusual in particle physics. I
think most particle physicists like to make more concrete predictions
(00:52):
about what we might find. My view is that we
should just sell the exploration. But I think the one
you're referring to is a kind of a famous area
in particle physics about the storage for the search for supersymmetry.
Exactly a lot of people thought we were going to
find supersymmetry at the large a John Collider. So far nothing.
(01:15):
I think I saw that movie from the eighties, wasn't
it called Despritley Seeking Susie. That's right, supersymmetry is short
and sometimes as Susie Susie here, give me a billion dollars,
I'll find her. Okay, Um, you start looking and I'll
send you a chet. Sounds good. I'll be right back. Hi.
(01:50):
I'm Organ and I'm Daniel, and welcome to our podcast,
Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of I
Heart Radio, in which we take things in the universe
and explain them to you. Things that are super, things
that are not so super, things that are symmetrical, and
things that are asymmetrical, things that are antithetical to everything
you believe in, but actually true. That's right. Today on
(02:12):
the podcast, we're going to talk about a pretty kind
of it's kind of a corner of particle physics, right
and it's it's probably not super well known, but it
is it can have incredible implications for our entire theory
about the universe. Right. Yeah, it's sort of like particle
physicists big hope. Right, it's like a beautiful idea that
(02:32):
everybody really really wishes were true. It's solve a bunch
of problems. It would work really well, it would be gorgeous.
Everybody wants us to find it. Yeah, that's right. Today
on the program, we're going to talk about super symmetry.
What is it? Not just everyday symmetry, not just good symmetry,
(02:55):
not just extra symmetry, but super not just mild mannered Tonian,
superpowered flying symmetry. That's right, supersymmetry. It's supposed to be
the next big thing in physics. You know. It's motivated
by looking at the equations and thinking this doesn't quite
fit together. How can we make this prettier? How can
(03:16):
we find something that's simpler, that hangs together in a
way that that satisfies us aesthetically. You know, that's sort
of surprising how much beauty we search for sometimes in physics. Yeah,
that's it's kind of interesting that physicists think about beauty
in their equations, right, Like, isn't that a subjective quality?
Completely subjective? Absolutely, But you know it's a very important
(03:39):
guiding principle, Like it goes all the way back to
Acam's razor. We prefer simple explanations over complex ones. Right,
If your theory has one moving part, it's simpler than
something that has two moving parts or ten moving parts. Right.
Even also just in your life, right, you prefer simpler
explanations to answer the questions you have. Right, So is
it more about elegant Do you think like that's an
(04:01):
elegant solution or an elegant answer in that it's it's
simple and directly to the point. Yeah, And I think
it goes to the questions we have as humans. You know,
I want to know how was the universe put together?
And I'd love if that answer was short, you know,
if it was simple. If the answer to the question
like how is the universe organized is like a huge
(04:23):
list of what every single particle in the universe is
supposed to do, then that's not really simplification. Right. In
some sense, the search for simplicity is inherent. It's core
to physics, right. That's what physics is is take everything
we observe and describe in terms of a few equations. Right. Well,
I mean you're you're basically looking for laws, right, I
mean that's the idea you know, the idea of a
(04:46):
law is is something that's applicable to many situations and
not just specific situations, right, exactly. You want you want
rules that generalize, Right. You want to measure something here
and know you can apply it later. You want to say, oh,
I studied this baseball's ocean, now I know how the
next baseball is going to move. Right. You don't want
to a rule that applies a different rule applies to
every baseball. Yeah, Like you can't have a government that
(05:08):
runs with a huge book that says, all right, if
a guy named Whorehead does a podcast and he does
this and that's not allowed, or if he does this,
that's not allowed. But then if it's a guy named Daniel,
then he can't do this or that of that. You
sort of want rule that applies to a general rule
that applies to everyone. YEA, Well, you know, I wouldn't
mind having special rule just for me. Daniel doesn't have
(05:28):
to pay taxes, Daniel can drive as fast as he likes.
That would be nice. But you're right, it's not a
sustainable way to do it. And and it's not just
not sustainable, you know, I think the whole job of
physics is to come up with generalizable laws. And so
we've done this a lot of times in physics. We've said, hey,
look at this um electricity is kind of similar to magnetism.
(05:50):
Can we simplify things and describe it in terms of
just one idea electro magnetism. Oh look, you know this
piece fits together with that piece. It turns out, you know,
it's it's all part of the same thing, right, or
like a discovering F equals m A. And you find
that this lab applies to a whole bunch of things,
and it helps you in many many situations, right, yeah, exactly,
(06:12):
you know, and we do this a lot. We just
were stumbling over stuff in physics and we don't necessarily
know what connects to what. So, like, you know, it's
like finding the front of the elephant, and then a
hundred years later you discover, oh, elephants have butts too,
And then finally somebody says, wait, put them together. You
get a whole animal. Right, it makes much more sense.
Elephant heads and elephant butts are not separate ideas. Um,
(06:32):
I want to be the guy, the person who wins
that Nobel prize the discovery of the elephant but yeah, exactly.
You can put that on your tombstone. Um. But that's
the idea, is like connecting different observations that happened to
you know, happen at different times or different places, and
realizing they're part of the whole. And so that's the
driving ideas. Let's look at what we know and look
(06:54):
for patterns, look for symmetry, symmetries that we can be
used to simplify things. So that's what this supersymmetry is
all about. It it's about simplifying the equations of the universe. Right.
It's like finding like a finding a kind of another
set of patterns that make it easier to understand or
easier to um put together right exactly. And it's a
(07:15):
theoretical exercise, right you say, hey, I notice these patterns
in the universe, and then you can test that. You
can say is this pattern real? Is it true? If
it is, then I expect to find this new particle
for example. The patterns usually predict something new, and amazingly
sometimes that works, like that's exactly what happened with the
Higgs Boson. Higgs and other folks were like, hey, look,
the universe doesn't quite make sense. This is weird wrinkle
(07:38):
that wrinkled goes away if you add one more particle,
and then we actually found the Higgs boson. So like
this strategy has worked. It's not just like something we
you know, enjoy doing that has worked, right, Well, it's
it's a it's a pretty cool word, supersymmetry. And and
just to be sure, it is one word. Like you
you don't write superspace symmetry. You write it like Superman.
(07:59):
It's like supersymmetry. Yeah, we have long meetings about punctuation
and particle physics, you know, whether to hyphenate where a
common goes. And because people come from all over the world,
they have different ideas about how to do this kind
of stuff. But yeah, we all agree supersymmetry is one word.
And it's very commonly abbreviated as susie s U s
WA because supersymmetries were just way too long to say. Right. Well,
(08:22):
I'm sure a lot of people know susie or two um,
but we were wondering how many people out there had
heard of this word supersymmetry. I know, it's basically one
of the most important motivators for governments to spend billions
of dollars on an experiment. So you think maybe there
was a pr campaign, Maybe people know what this is,
maybe they have an opinion about it. And so, as usual,
Daniel went out there and ask people in the street
(08:44):
if they knew what the word supersymmetry means. Here's what
people had to say. Yeah, I've heard about it, but
I don't know what it is. I've heard about it
in some lectures I was listening to from from from
Fineman I think, and Paul to Rock No no idea.
Who would you guess just from the name, I would
(09:06):
have to do something symmetrical, thanks very much from Big
Bang Theory Ya from the TV show. Just heard it,
but I don't really know what it means to be.
To guess, what do you think big supersymmetry might be?
Probably has to do with symmetry and how you make
things easier in science, probably because usually like everything that
symmetrical makes it easier because you can divide and a
(09:26):
half when it's too geometry, or it's just like easier
to apply some rules and equations on it. So I
guess it would just be like a simplification of something
really complicated. Okay, awesome, I don't know what that means.
But my guess is like something about math, like thanks
very much, assumes something is symmetrical, or like something is
(09:48):
like balanced, or even maybe no, no, never, no, I
don't have to guess what it might be. What do
you think it might be symmetrical? So, as usual, the
Big Bang Theory has educated Americans and what a word
is without explaining what it actually means. I bet you
plus love and hate that show like you probably you
(10:09):
probably don't love the writing or the way that physicists
are portrayed. But at the same time, you know, it's
sort of educated so many people in the words and
the kind of maybe a little bit of the concepts
in particle physics. Right right as they're laughing and making
fun of physicists, they accidentally learned a few pieces of vocabulary.
There is a positive side of that. You're right, you
wouldn't You wouldn't let people laugh at you too if
(10:32):
they ended up learning something. Isn't that the premise of
this entire podcast? Listen laugh learn something? Anyway? Well, there
you go. You're right up there with Sheldon and and
I don't even even know the other characters. But no, no,
I would totally humiliate myself if everybody in the world
could learn a little bit more physics. Whatever you want,
you want to do a dunk tank, you want me
(10:54):
to wear a silly costume, sign me up on man.
That should totally be our live traveling show for this podcast.
You have a dunk tank with like if you answer
a physics question correctly, you get the dunk Daniel with.
You have like a short Anger's dunk tank. You know, oh,
like is he dunked or is he not done? Behind
a cave with like a box and people throw things
(11:16):
and then it's all connected to some quantum particle and
you may or may not get wet mm hmm. So
I guess that will be my sacrifice for the art. Right,
That's how I'm going to make sure that I'm suffering
for our art. Right. That's good because my creative partner
is a joy to worker. Good. He sounds like a
nice guy. He's an amazing, amazing um anyway. But yeah,
(11:43):
so not a lot of people have heard of the concept.
I mean, everyone knows what super beans, and I imagine
a lot of most people out there know what symmetry means.
But when you put it together, suddenly it's a it's
a new word, right. Yeah. You could hear people trying
to figure it out on the fly, speculating what it
might mean based on zero knowledge and just the atomology.
And yeah, so nobody had an idea supersymmetry needs to
(12:05):
be better sold, right right, Well, let's get into it
all right, um, And for me, you know, I think
we just let's talk about what symmetry means in the
first place. I mean, I know that in the common usage,
symmetry just means that it's kind of like a like
a mirror image, like something symmetrically something else. If it's
if it looks the same as if you were looking
at it in a mirror. Right. Yeah. It's all about patterns, right,
(12:27):
is can you do two things look similar? Right? And Um?
For particles, we find a lot of these patterns among
the particles. And what we do is we instead of
thinking about the individual particles the way you were talking
about individual laws for each person, we try to think
about the particles together in groups. So for example, you
have the electron, and then you have the electrons, antiparticle,
(12:48):
the positron. Right, we don't really think about the electron
and the positron is separate particles. We think about the
we think of them as two sides of a coin, right,
the positive and negative version of this part particle, and
we think of it as one concept. It's kind of
like a it's the same except you flip a sign
or you know. It's kind of like if you you
put them electron in front of the mirror, one of
(13:09):
them would be spinning one way, either one would be
spinning kind of the other way. Right. Yeah, it's like
you don't think about the heads separately from the tails
of a coin, right, There just different sides of the
same coin, literally, And we think about particles the same way.
And because every particle seems to have an antiparticle, you know,
with some funny exceptions like the photon, that it's a
very useful strategy. We notice this relationship between positrons and electrons,
(13:33):
between muans and anti muons, and so that's a really
important symmetry and it it helps us ask questions. Right,
We're like, well, why is there this symmetry? What does
it mean? We think it reveals something deep about the universe.
We still don't know the answer to that one, right,
Like why do particles have antiparticles. We have no idea,
but I think it's an important clue about something fundamental
(13:54):
about the universe. So we're always looking for these patterns,
not just because it helps us simplify and right thing
down more quickly, but because we were hopeful that their
clues about what's going on on the deeper level. Right. So, okay,
so that's what symmetry means. It's it's kind of like
um an electron having a mirror image of itself called
the anti electron. That's right. But symmetry works in lots
(14:15):
of different ways, like there are other symmetries in particle physics.
If you remember the episode where we introduced sort of
the standard model, the electron has the anti electron, but
also has symmetries in other ways, Like there's the mun
and the taw. These particles are exactly the same as
the electron, but they're heavier, right, So the electron has
two kinds of symmetries. That's a symmetry as well, But
(14:37):
they're not they're not like they don't weigh the same,
they just sort of act the same, that's right. There
is a difference, right, So they're not the identical particle.
But there's a pattern there because the electron is not
the only one with too heavier cousins, right, The neutrino
is too heavier cousins. The up coork has too heavier cousins,
the down cork is too heavier cousins. There's something going
on where every particle has two heavier versions of itself.
(14:59):
We call the flavors. Sometimes, because we're not great in
particle physics about coming with new names, adopt an existing word,
which is very confusing. Wait, so that's that's a symmetry
as well, these kind of heavier versions of an electron.
Those are absolutely really what how is that symmetric? Because
you know it imagine symmetry means like the same or
(15:21):
mirror image. Yeah, it's just you have to change your
definition of what the mirror means. Right. So in the
case of positive and negative electrons, your mirror is changing
the charge, right, it's changing from positive to negative. But
that mirror can have lots of different kinds of reflections.
Right in this case, an electron and a muon and
a town. We think of its just different varieties of
the same kind of particle. So sort of like a
(15:43):
three way mirror. These particles are definitely related. Right, an
electron is much more close relationship with the muon than
it does with like corks. But why why do you
call it a symmetry? Is it in the equation? Something
about the equations that somehow you know what I mean?
You can write all those particles, all those particles have
the same kinds of interactions, right, they interact with the
(16:03):
same forces. Uh, they interact with the forces in very
similar ways. And so when you write down the equations,
instead of writing down here, how here's how an electron works,
Here's how a mun works, Here's how a tow works.
Here the laws for those particles, we just write down
one set of laws because they follow the same laws.
There's a little bit of a difference. Each one has
a different mass, right, but the laws, the basic structure
(16:24):
of how it works is the same. Is it kind
of like different solutions to the same equation? Or Well,
what we don't know is why we have them, right,
you're sort of suggesting like the reason we have three, right, Well,
we don't know the answer to that. We don't know
why there is more than one at all, Like why
does this symmetry exist? And then we don't know why
there are three in a four or seven or two. Right,
(16:45):
those are deep questions. When you discover symmetry, it's helpful because,
as we said, it gives you a clue about some
deep questions, but doesn't always give you the answer, right,
sort of raises the question. So in this case, when
when you say symmetry, you kind of mean like an
imperfect copy. Yeah, exactly, and the perfection there can vary, right,
Like the positron of the electron are really exactly the
(17:06):
same except for the charge um. In the case of
the electron, the mu and the too, they're very similar.
There are some differences, the most important one is the mass.
So you can have more or less perfect symmetries. None
of these symmetries are exact, so just sort of like
guiding patterns that we used to organize how how we
write down the equations. Okay, so if you had to,
(17:28):
if you had to christen this thing another name, would
you still call it some symmetry or would you maybe
use another word? Oh? I think symmetry is a nice word.
You know, symmetry shows like aesthetic purity, right, I mean,
when you're looking at art, you like symmetry. But when
you look at a face. Scientists have like discovered right
that symmetric faces are considered the most beautiful. So I
think there's a connection between symmetry and beauty and simplicity.
(17:51):
So I like the word symmetry. Yeah, No, I think
it's it's pretty nice. It's hard to spell for her
young students. I've I've seen a creatively spelled in lots
of different way is. But it's a nice word. Well,
hold on, I'm still stuck a little bit in symmetry.
So why is symmetry Plano mild manner symmetry? Why is
that um important in the equations of physics because you
(18:14):
see it or it's it's something that helps you solve
the equations. Well, it's for the same reason that you
um you said earlier about like writing laws. You wouldn't
want to write down a different law for everybody. You'd notice, Hey,
I'm rinning now all the same laws, except I'm just
substituting Jorge some places and Daniel in other places. Maybe
I should just write one law for everybody, right, And
(18:34):
so that's what we're doing with symmetries, is we're trying
to find these patterns to simplify things. We could say, hey, look,
the same laws apply to the electron and the muan
and the tow. We just need to tweak this a
little bit, and the same rules apply. So that's what
we're going for. Maybe, Okay, So maybe when you when
you say symmetry, you actually means like same rules apply. Yeah,
Or you could think of it like a pattern, right,
(18:55):
all right, So it's kind of like you might say,
like a living in the US is very symmetric to
living in Suitland in that blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah, and it's kind of like it's it's the
magrick thing that it's sort of like the same rules apply,
or there's some sort of pattern between living here in
the vein in Switzerland. Yeah. I don't know if there's
much in common between living in Switzerland living in the US.
(19:16):
I've lived in both places. They're pretty different experiences. Um,
I guess they both eat yogurt. Super symmetric. It's not
a super symmetric analogy, Daniel, Exactly right. That was not
a super analogy about symmetry. It's an underwhelming symmetry, yeah, exactly.
But you know, you could look for example, what are
the laws of different countries, And you might say, hey, look,
(19:37):
there is these underlying things everybody wants to the value
of property and everyone who wants life, and everyone wants liberty,
and you could say those are inherent about being human.
Is something about forming a human society that makes people
want these things, and so we should encode those as
the bedrock principles of humanity. Right, so we call those
human rights. You so and and and you've learned something
(19:58):
about humanity that way by identifying in these core principles. Right.
So it's kind of like a perspective. It's like when
you say you want the laws of physics to be symmetric,
you're saying you want them to be kind of a universal,
and you want them to be applicable to many different things,
and you want them to not very on a Willie
Neely basis, wanted to be kind of rock solid. Yeah, exactly.
(20:21):
Symmetries allow us to write these things more compactly, write
to write down fewer laws because we identify patterns and
so the same laws can apply to different kinds of phenomena. Right, Okay,
So that's kind of regular mild manner. Clark Kent glasses wearing.
Symmetry is some sort of like a perspective on the
laws of physics that say that it's, um, it's sort
(20:42):
of applicable everywhere. So then um, but now they're supersymmetry.
Are you ready to put spandex on the look like
the clothes off and see what he's wearing underneath? When
making a family friendly podcast, Well, he's taking his clothes up,
but he's got an outfit on underneath. Folks. Okay, well
it's get into supersymmetry, but first let's take a quick break. Okay,
(21:15):
so that's a that's a pretty good breakdown of symmetry,
which is, um, it's kind of like the perspective that
things should, um, they have a pattern in nature and
things should have fundamental laws that don't change. Is because
you move from one place to the other or from
one particle to the other. Right, Yeah, it's yeah exactly.
It's like if you notice, hey, there's sort of two
different kinds of things. What can we find that relates them?
(21:38):
How can we think of them the same way? Right?
Do we have to have two different totally separate categories
or can we say there's a relationship between them and
understand them and sort of in the context of a
larger idea. Right, it's like, why do we have Democrats
and Republicans? Oh, they're both just political parties, right, that's
sort of the symmetry between that. Okay, so then now
let's get into the topic of the podcast. Um supersymmetry.
(22:01):
So that's like the regular symmetry, but more so or
I guess the question is like, what are an all
symmetries super? Like? What's special about supersymmetries? Supersymmetry is called
super because the folks that named it were like grandiose
in their ideas. Um, it's called super because it sort
of encompasses the whole set of particles. Here's the idea.
(22:24):
The idea is that we noticed that there are kind
of two kinds of particles out there that we've discovered.
There's the particles that make up stuff, right, the matter particles,
electrons and corks and all that kind of stuff. Those
particles have a technical name called fermions. Then there's a
different kind of particle. These are These are particles that
describe the forces. So the ones that like are responsible
(22:46):
for electromagnetism, the photon or the weak nuclear force the
W and Z boson or the strong force the glue on.
These particles are different. We call them bosons, and the
difference between them is technical and we don't need to
get deeply into it. We have these two different kinds
of particles, the fermions which are matter particles, and the bosons,
which are the force particles, and I always get them confused.
(23:07):
So maybe for this podcast, let's just call the matter
particles and force particles. About that? Sure that sounds good,
a matter particles and force particles, And that's odd to
people who are like, that's weird that we have two
different kinds, And they thought, what if what if there's
sort of a symmetry, right, what if there's a connection,
Like what if every force particle had some sort of
(23:29):
matter particle that was like its reflection, right, imagine like
this is the mirror now, force versus matter. What if
every matter particle had a corresponding force particle and every
forest particle had a corresponding matter particle. Wouldn't that be
pretty right? Wouldn't that be a nice connection between these two?
Otherwise just disparate groups of particles, These just two lists
(23:50):
that we have. Yeah, well that's weird, isn't it, because
force and matter are so different. But you're saying that
in particle physics. In quantum physics, you just treat them
all a particles. We do treat them as particles. Yeah,
and forced particles and matter particles we treat them a
little bit different in quantum field theory. Um. But we'd
like to see the connection between them, right. We have
like this one group of matter particles and this other
(24:11):
group of force particles, and we're wondering, like, why do
we have two different kinds, and why is there this
one list longer than that other list? Is there a
way we can sort of fit them all together into
one grand symmetry that I dare say a super symmetry? Right? Oh,
I see, So, like the matter particles are maybe symmetric
among themselves, and the forced particles are maybe symmetric among themselves.
(24:33):
And so you've always had these two groups, and so
you're wondering, are they maybe just reflections of each other
across board? Yeah? Exactly the problem is that there isn't
really an easy way to make them correspond to each other.
Like there's no forced particle that corresponds to the electron
and there's no like matter particle that corresponds to the
photon for example. So if this is gonna work, you
(24:53):
have to invent a reflection particle for each one. Right,
so the every matter particle have to invent a new
force particle that we haven't yet found, and for every
force particle you have to invent a new matter particle
that we haven't yet seen. Wait, so like, um, if
I have a matter particle like the electron or like
a cork, you're saying that if there if there are supersymmetry,
(25:17):
then that means that there's a forced particle that is
just like the cork or the electron, but it's a
forced particle and something about a change that makes it
a forced particle and not a matter particle. Exactly, if
you have that symmetry, there should be a reflection for
every particle, just like well, we know there are particles
and antiparticles. So if there's some particle out there, you say, well,
it should have an antiparticle, right in the same way
(25:40):
we say, well the electron, there should be some forced
particle that corresponds to it, and there should be some
matter correspond particle that corresponds to the photon. Why couldn't
you have what couldn't the photon be the supersymmetric version
of the electron? Do you know what I mean? Like,
why can't we just match them up? Well, we want
them to have the same mass, right, because that would
be the nicest symmetry. And so the photon of the
electron have nothing like the same mass, and then what
(26:03):
would match up with the muan right, and what we
match up with the tow So we want sort of
all the symmetries in the matter particles to be reflected
in the symmetries and the force particles, um. And then
there's a bunch of other technical reasons why that just
can't work. Well, the important thing is that they have
really silly names, right, That's the away from this exactly.
(26:24):
So what they did was they saying, well, we can't
just invent a bunch of crazy new names for all
these particles, right, we need a name for the particle
that's the force version of the electron, and the particle
that's the force version of the cork, and the particle
that's the matter version of the photon. So they came
up with a rule for how to name the reflection particles.
And the rule is if you take a matter particle
(26:45):
and you want to name its force reflection, right, the
particle the force particle. That's it's sort of supersymmetric partner's hypothetical. Hypothetically,
we haven't discovered them. Like if there's a Swiss version
of korhe, it would be named this. That's right. And
what you do is you put an S in front
of the name, right, so you have a particle. The
(27:06):
super symmetric version is a sparticle. And so for example,
the electron, it's super symmetric version. The fourth version of
it is the selectron. Why is it one s and
not two s? Is? You know, like supersymmetry should be
like this selectron. And that's why because we don't want
(27:27):
to be sounding like all the time in our meetings.
It gets pretty silly, like we have the top cork
and it's super symmetric version is the stop cork, right,
or the bottom cork and it's verse. It's super symmetric
version is the spottom cork. Right. Wow, that sounds like
(27:48):
like an invitation for funny meetings exactly. Um, everybody who
learns these rules has a good giggle over it. For
a few weeks and then it just becomes a part
of your day. Um and and and then in the
other direction, if you have a force particle like the photon,
and you need a name for the matter version of it,
(28:08):
you add eno to the end. So, for example, a
photon is a force particle, it's a matter version would
be a photino. So if there's a Daniel in Switzerland
and you're wondering, what would the Daniel be named in
the US, it would be Daniel Leno. Daniel Leno, Yeah, exactly,
Daniel Leno and sorehe that's the super symmetric version of
(28:34):
this podcast Daniel universe. But can you can you just
do that? Can you just post the existence of a
force particle you've never seen? Wouldn't that? Isn't that weird?
(28:56):
Isn't that like making up a whole new force in
the universe? Exactly it is. But that's what you want
to do, right when you make a when you observe
a pattern, the next thing to do is to say, well,
if this pattern holes, if it really is true, what
can I predict that hasn't been seen before. That's how
you test it, right, That's how they That's how the
Higgs boson was verified, they saw this pattern. The pattern
(29:18):
is complete. Only of the Higgs boson exists, and they
looked for it found it. Boom pattern probably correct. In
the case of supersymmetry. You say, well, what if every
particle has this supersymmetric reflection. If so, that all these
other particles should exist. And it's crazy because what you're
doing is doubling the number of particles. Right, you say, Okay,
we have twelve matter particles and five for particles. Now
(29:41):
I'm going to say we have twenty four particles and
ten particles. Right, So it's um, it's a big prediction. Yeah,
it's It's kind of like saying, hey, I have a theory.
I think that for every person in the US, there's
an there's a Swiss version in Switzerland of that person.
Everyone in in Switzerland has a as version in the
US and n't seen any of them yet. Yeah, they're
(30:05):
all hidden somewhere underneath, underneath, and exactly. And when you
make a theory of physics, you have to explain all
of that. You have to say, here's something you could
do to prove my theory is correct. Here's a prediction
I can make. You will go and find this particle,
and you also have to explain why we haven't seen
it yet, right, because if they're all these other particles
out there in the universe that the universe can make,
(30:26):
you have to explain why we didn't see them yet.
And the standard answer was, until very recently, the standard
answer was why they were a little too heavy. That those,
for some reason, the supersymmetric version of our particles, were
all too heavy to just like hang out in the universe.
They didn't last for very long because they were so heavy.
So you have to give me ten billion dollars to
(30:48):
build a particle collider so I can create the energy
density needed to make these particles that would then prove
my crazy theory, right, which would then prove my crazy
theory if we had found it. Yeah, you're like, it's
not my fault that you can't see them. They they're
just kind of a little overweight. Yeah, exactly, they're a
little overweight. And that was the key that, right there
(31:08):
is the crux of it. We had to say, all right,
if you give us ten billion dollars, will build a
collider that's such and such big that can search for
particles up to a certain energy, because remember, the bigger
the collider, the more energy you're pouring into it, right,
because you can push the particles faster and faster, which
means the heavier new particles you can make. It's directly correlation,
like the more money you spend, the bigger the collider,
(31:31):
the heavier particles you can make. Than The question was,
is this collider big enough to find supersymmetry? Is supersymmetry
sort of in the next chunk of unexplored territory that
can be searched by this collider. Okay, so that that's
what supersymmetry is. It's the theory that all the particles
(31:51):
have these crazy twins hidden out there in the universe,
and so if you give me ten billion dollars, I'm
pretty I'm pretty sure I'm gonna find them. That's right.
And it was a fun idea, and it was invented
in the seventies and eighties and played with and um
people thought, hey, this is kind of cool. It's cute mathematically,
but it's kind of a big prediction, you know. But
then people notice that not only was acute mathematically, but
(32:13):
it actually solved a different problem we have in there
in physics. And so if it was true, it would
be like really nice. It would like tie up a
bunch of different loose ends all at the same time. Oh,
I see it's Um, it's a crazy theory, but it's
the answer to more than one puzzle in physics. Yeah.
For example, one puzzle we have in physics is like,
(32:34):
why does the Higgs boson have the mass that it does.
We don't know why. Um, we can calculate what massive
should have, and the calculation is kind of complicated. But
the short version of the story is that force particles
make them make it push the mass in one direction,
and matter particles push in the other direction. And so
and these and these are really big pushes right there,
(32:55):
push it by by huge amounts. And so the fact
that the two sort of balance out to give us
a Higgs Boson that's not like ridiculously heavy. It seems
like a big coincidence. You know. It's like, Um, you
have two different numbers that happen to almost cancel out,
and you think, oh, there's no relationship between them. It's
a coincidence. Well, if every force particle has a matter particle,
(33:19):
then it's very natural for them to cancel each other.
Out because there's a symmetry there, right, and everything that's
pushing one way, it gets automatically pushed the other way.
So it would sort of solve that problem, like in
a really nice, nice way. Like when I first heard
that idea of was like, Oh, that's clever, that's beautiful.
That's like a really nice natural explanation, right, because a
(33:39):
coincidence in the universe. You guys don't like coincidences, Yeah,
coincidences beg the question You're like, is that really a
coincidence or is there an explanation? Right? Um, It's like
if you discover, hey, this supermarket seems to sell the
same number of hot dogs and hot dog buns every year,
I wonder why. Right, Well, it turns out people buy
(34:00):
hot dogs and hot dog buns together for a reason, right,
They're connected. Um, And so you want to discover these
apparent coincidences because they tell you something about the universe
or about hot dogs. It's kind of like if you
if you find a if you do find an identical
Jorge in Switzerland, you'd be like, that's too much of
(34:20):
a coincidence. They must have there must be something going
on that somehow split them apart. And put them in
each country. Exactly. If I ever went to Switzerland and
met soorhe, then thank you, Um, yeah, exactly, I would
think that that's a clue. Right, there's something going on.
(34:41):
And so that's the idea of supersymmetry, and if it's
solved a bunch of problems, it might even explain dark matter, right,
And so it's a really it's a tantalizing idea because
they could they could kill a lot of birds with
one stone, kill a lot of matter and forces and
one Yeah, you can win five Nobel Prizes with one discovery. Wow.
All right, let's get into whether or not this is
(35:03):
actually real and if we you have found evidence for it.
But first let's take a quick break. All right, So
that's supersymmetry. We um, we broke it down a little bit,
(35:25):
and you said it might explain dark matter. What does
that mean? Well, there's a particle. A one of the
super symmetric particles is something that doesn't turn into anything else.
It just sort of hangs out because it's the lightest
one can't turn into anything else. And so if it exists,
it might be the dark matter particle. Right, So it
might be the dark matter is made of particles, and
(35:47):
the particles is made out of might be super symmetric particles. Wow,
is it the super symmetric version of the photon? Like
that would be cool? Yeah, exactly. The opposite of light
is dark matter. Let's that's that's beautiful. We're writing right
there there you go. See you're searching for beauty in
your answers. Right. You don't want just any answer, you
want poetry, right, and that's what this is for us.
(36:08):
Symmetry is the physicist version of poetry, except it doesn't rhyme. Oh,
I know it doesn't rhyme because all the particles and
with the same kenoes you write a pretty silly song
using only supersymmetric particle names. Yeah exactly. Okay, So let's
get into whether it's real or not. So is this
theory real? Have they found evidence for it? We have
(36:29):
exactly zero evidence that supersymmetry is really exactly we have
symmetric So in a way, you sort of confirmed the
beauty of the universe. No, the only thing supersymmetry has
going for it is its elegance. Is its beauty is
that it would solve these problems. But you know, nature
is not interested in the ideas that we think are beautiful.
There are lots of gorgeous theories out there that turned
(36:51):
out to not be true. And so we you know,
a lot of people said we would find supersymmetry and
we turned on the Large Change and collider um, but
we didn't. They thought you would find like these crazy
hypothetical particles to just start popping out of the collider. Yeah,
and it's pretty exciting when you turn on a new collider,
a collider and an energy nobody has ever collided particles
(37:14):
that before. You could discover something in minutes, right, It
really is like landing on a new new planet that
nobody's ever been to before, nobody's ever created collisions of
this energy. So it could be the first time you
had enough energy to make these particles, and it could
be that they're just like you know, flew out of
the collider like crazy. So the first few days the
Large Hadron Collider, everybody was very excited, Right, We're like,
(37:36):
what's in the data, what's in the data? Did you
discover supersymmetry? Is it there? Is it there? And there
was a big community of theorists who really believed that
we would find it and that we would find it
very early on, but we didn't. So far. The only
thing we found that the large Hadron collider that we
didn't know about before was the Higgs boson. Huge triumph,
but um. A lot of people sold supersymmetry as a
(37:59):
potential discovery of the large hGe On collider and so
far not there. Maybe they were just hedging in case
they didentified the Higgs. They're like, Wow, we might not
find the Higgs, but we might find Susie. Yeah, it
could have been that we didn't see the Higgs, right.
We weren't guaranteed right, We didn't know um. And one
question is like how far away is Susie? How heavy
are these particles? Are these particles real and part of
(38:21):
the nature, but the large hGe On collider is just
not quite big enough to find them? Right? Or is
it that there there's like super far away and you'd
have to build a collider the size of the Solar
System to make them. We don't really have a good
answer to that question. We don't really good theoretical clues
that tell us how big the collider has to be.
The theory doesn't tell you what's the maximum, Like you
(38:44):
can just keep going. The theory doesn't tell you, well,
if you haven't found them by this mask, then they
probably don't exist. Right, the most beautiful version of supersymmetry
all the particles had the same mass as their super particles.
Now we know that's not true because there if the
electron had a superparticle that had the same mass, we
would have found it already. I like how you say
the most beautiful, Like you guys have beauty contest for theories, simplest,
(39:10):
most poetic theories, right, Um, you know, and uh, some
of these some of these series look great in the
swimsuit competition. They stumble when they asked them of geopolitics,
but you know, they do their best, and then the
judges flip a sign saying ten seven. You can have
(39:33):
versions of supersymmetry where the supersymmetric particles are like, way, way,
way too heavy for us to ever practically make them
in any collider we would build, So we're not guaranteed. Yeah,
so there's different flavors of supersymmetry, and some of them
are more super than others. Yeah, there's a huge number
of supersymmetric theories, and we've ruled out a bunch of them,
(39:54):
but there's a huge number left, so you can't really
kill supersymmetries. It's always got another rock for it itself
to hide under. Um. But as I was saying before,
there was a controversy because people thought maybe the theory
community was too bullish on whether the LATEC was big
enough to find supersymmetry. And now that we didn't, like,
you know, should they rethink how they made those arguments
(40:18):
because we're in the beginning stages of arguing for the
next collider, right, and people are wondering, what this wouldn't
be big enough to find supersymmetry. How do you know
you were wrong last time? Should we believe you this time? Right? Well,
I don't know if I told you, but I once
gave the keynote address at a supersymmetry conference. Did you
give us super talk? It was you give two super talks?
It was it was super ansymmetric. Did you give it
(40:41):
forward and then backwards? That's right? I walked down stage
and then I walked off stage. But no, yeah, yeah,
I talked a lot of physicists that they're physicists there,
and they were, you know a lot of them were
like really convinced that supersymmetry was is true, and and
I was like, how do you what makes you so
confident or when? And it was really sort of came
(41:03):
down to a sense of faith or a sense of
like like you said, like the like this believe that
the universe has to be beautiful and it has to
be symmetric in this way. Yeah, a lot of people
who bought that story. Personally, me not interested. I think ridiculous.
I've never spent any of my professional scientific energy searching
(41:24):
for supersymmetry, and I have no interest in it. Really.
Why what makes you so down on it? There's a
few reasons. Um. One is it's a bit too complex
for me. I mean, you're predicting a lot of different particles, right,
and it's sort of a big it's a big thing
to predict. Um. I prefer a sort of simpler, more
compact answer. Um. And But I think more fundamentally, I'm
(41:46):
not into particle physics to confirm theoretical ideas. I'm not.
My job is not to say yes or no to
the ideas some folks have in their office. My interesting
particle physics is to explore my scientific fantasy, is not
to discover something that Professor x y Z predicted, But
to discover something weird unanticipated, it's something that makes Professor
(42:07):
x y Z go what that can't happen? Um, That's
why I'm an experimentalist, because I think I see it
as a as an exploration, right, right, But you need
the theories to tell you if what you're seeing is
weird or not. Right, Like, if there weren't any theories,
you wouldn't know it is weird. Well, you can discover
a particle that nobody's ever seen before, right and say, oh,
what's this? How does it work? What does it do?
(42:29):
How heavy is it? How does it interact? Right? What
does that mean? And you know, then the theorists can
get started understanding how it fits into the other patterns.
But you can definitely have experiment be the leader. Right.
There was a period in particle physics earlier this century
where basically every time you turned on the collider you
found a new particle and nobody knew what they were
and it was a it was a huge mess, and
it was called the particles Zoo And that one must
(42:49):
have been really fun, you know. Um, these days I
just want to just like fuzzy little particles actually I'm
totally anti zoo. Um things, those are crazy. They're locking
up these beautiful animals and cages. Um. That's the topic
of a different podcast. So my interest in particle physics
is more about looking for something unanticipated than box checking
(43:11):
the ideas of other people. Um. But it's a huge area,
like some big fraction of particle physicists search for supersymmetry. Right,
But you're saying that you're telling me earlier that some
people a lot of people that are have given up.
They're like, all right, forget it, it's not real. M. Yeah. Well,
a lot of people feel like if supersymmetry is going
to be real and it's going to be natural and
(43:32):
beautiful and explain all these things, it has to be
light that you can't have super duper heavy particles. They
don't like the versions of supersymmetry with the particles are
too heavy for us to have found them. Yeah. Um,
And so I think a good number of people have
given up on it or are thinking about other ideas well.
(43:53):
I certainly hope that you guys find that the universe
is beautiful and has perfect facial structure, the symmetric and
wins A lot of beauty contests. Well, I'm sure that
whatever we find about the universe, it will be beautiful,
and it will be symmetric, and it will be incredible.
It just might not be the idea of beauty that
we went out looking for. You know, when we go
(44:14):
out and look for things on other planets, we expect
to find incredible, mind blowing things. We just don't predict
them in advance, right, and we embrace that. We look
forward to being surprised by nature. That's the whole idea
of science. Yeah. I think what you're saying is giving.
They should give you the billion dollars and not this theories.
My checking account is open, so people free to send
(44:34):
me checks for billions of dollars. Yes, that's how you agree?
All right? What's our Veno account? Daniel Venoll and Daniel
and Jorge dot com. Yeah exactly, or you know, I
accept gold blue Yon also. You know that's fine. Great.
Do you accept menos and zenos? Exactly? Only a lot
of them, though it takes a big pile and mean
a certain arrangement. All right, thank you very much. That's
(44:57):
a supersymmetry. I hope you guys learned what it is
and it's so super and it's something that we might discover.
So maybe by the time this podcast comes out, we
will have a hint of supersymmetry. Or maybe it will
take another hundred years. Nobody knews until then, See you
next time. If you still have a question after listening
(45:22):
to all these explanations, please drop us a line. We'd
love to hear from you. You can find us at Facebook, Twitter,
and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge That's one Word, or
email us at Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain
the Universe is a production of I Heart Radio. From
More podcast from my Heart Radio visit the I Heart
(45:44):
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Hosts And Creators
Daniel Whiteson
Kelly Weinersmith
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