"Perfect" Electron Roundness Bruises Supersymmetry

astroengine writes "New measurements of the electron have confirmed, to the smallest precision attainable, that it has a perfect roundness. This may sounds nice for the little electron, but to one of the big physics theories beyond the standard model, it's very bad news. 'We know the Standard Model does not encompass everything,' said physicist David DeMille, of Yale University and the ACME collaboration, in a press release. 'Like our LHC colleagues, we're trying to see something in the lab that's different from what the Standard Model predicts.' Should supersymmetrical particles exist, they should have a measurable effect on the electron's dipole moment. But as ACME's precise measurements show, the electron still has zero dipole moment (as predicted by the standard model) and is likely very close to being perfectly round. Unfortunately for the theory of supersymmetry, this is yet another blow."

Comments

ACME

[Tablizer]

"ACME collaboration"?

Then just bang the electron on the head with an ACME anvil, and it will grow lumps.

Perfectly spherical?

[Anonymous Coward]

Science is going to be really screwed when they discover frictionless planes also exist.

Re:Perfectly spherical?

[Anonymous Coward]

On the contrary, they'll all stand up and say this is what they've trained for all those years of assuming spherical cows and frictionless surfaces.

Has Anything Ever Validated Supersymmetry?

[Greyfox]

Every time I see a news item about supersymmetry, it always seems to be disproving it. Seems like the only thing the hypothesis has going for it is the universe would make a lot more elegantly designed if it was true. It seems like mostly wishful thinking to me.

Re:Has Anything Ever Validated Supersymmetry?

[fatphil]

But the proponents of SuSy claim that their theories are elegant!

Have you ever seen a Nima Arkani-Hamed talk? (there are some on youtube and elsewhere). Most annoying is that not only does he rant and rave about how wonderfully simple and elegant his supersymmetry is, but he decorates those claims with embellishments like "they must be true".

Even more annoying is when a big potentially-confirming experiment is concluding, he's proud to say what result he expect that will confirm this theories, add that if he doesn't get them he'll scrap his theories, and then when the results don't confirm his theories, he shuts the fuck up briefly, and then resumes pushing the same old theories.

If you want good science. Don't look in the direction of that branch of physics, you'll have more luck in psychotherapy, economics, or astrology.

Re:Time for some really new physics

[cold fjord]

Although there has long been a connection between math and physics, as people dig further into the math they are finding some unexpected things, and ways to better understand, simplify, or extend the equations.

Mathematicians Link Knot Theory to Physics
A Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics

There are a number of seemingly promising developments out there that are sharpening the investigative tools as well as providing interesting new lines of investigation, as well as new data to chew on.

Spooky Connection: Wormholes and the Quantum World
Physicists Create Quantum Link Between Photons That Don't Exist at the Same Time
Schrodinger’s ‘Kitten’? Large-Scale Quantum Entanglement Achieved By Two Physics Labs

String theorists squeeze nine dimensions into three
New work gives credence to theory of universe as a hologram

Now we are developing a growing understanding of the interplay between biology and physics.

Quantum biology: Do weird physics effects abound in nature?

Who knows where things may lead next? Of course people should be careful in performing experiments.

Collapse of the universe is closer than ever before

Re:Once again way over my head, but...

[slew]

The deviations they are talking about aren't things like mountains or bumps, but a systematic non-spherical bias.

For example, the earth isn't spherical either, it's basically a bit fatter around the equator pretty close to an oblate spheroid (e.g., an M&M is a more exaggerated oblate spheroid). Like a baseball, if the electron isn't totally spherical, you can detect a systematic bias as it's being thrown around (you can think of the LHC as throwing an electron spit-ball or a knuckle-ball).

Although even in the standard model, the electron at some energy level probably has a detectable dipole moment (e.g., the charge wouldn't be uniformly spherically distributed in the electron), it is my understanding that it is predicted to be too small to be validated by current experiments. However, some versions of super-symmetry apparently would predict that the electron at some energy levels would have a larger detectable dipole moment . I guess these super-symmetry predictions didn't pan out.

Bad news for string theory

[Required Snark]

String theory is strongly linked to supersymmetry, If supersymmetry is not found experimentally then string theory becomes much less likely. The current alternative to string theory is loop quantum gravity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersymmetry

For string theory to be consistent, supersymmetry appears to be required at some level (although it may be a strongly broken symmetry). In particle theory, supersymmetry is recognized as a way to stabilize the hierarchy between the unification scale and the electroweak scale (or the Higgs boson mass), and can also provide a natural dark matter candidate. String theory also requires extra spatial dimensions which have to be compactified as in Kaluza-Klein theory.

Loop quantum gravity (LQG) predicts no additional spatial dimensions, nor anything else about particle physics. These theories can be formulated in three spatial dimensions and one dimension of time, although in some LQG theories dimensionality is an emergent property of the theory, rather than a fundamental assumption of the theory. Also, LQG is a theory of quantum gravity which does not require supersymmetry. Lee Smolin, one of the originators of LQG, has proposed that a loop quantum gravity theory incorporating either supersymmetry or extra dimensions, or both, be called "loop quantum gravity II".

A whole lot of PhD dissertations, physics publications, and academic careers are on the line over this. String theory is the current favorite and loop quantum gravity the underdog. The direction of theoretical particle physics could be radically altered if the LHC doesn't find evidence of supersymmetry.

Re:Time for some really new physics

[Spad]

Not to nitpick, but isn't the collapse of the universe *always* closer than ever before?

Re:Invisible unicorns in a garage

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a good question. There are a number of theoretical and empirical motivations for supersymmetry, including the existence of dark matter, the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe, and the hierarchy problem in particle physics. I don't fully understand all of these myself. However, this short video released by my collaboration tries to explain some of them at a basic level: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIflReRmynk.