Slashdot Mirror
The Rise and Fall of Supersymmetry
Ethan Siegel at the StartsWithABang blog writes:
"Have you ever wondered why the masses of the fundamental particles have the small values that they do, compared to, say, the Planck scale? Whether the fundamental forces all unify at some high energy? And whether there's a natural, compelling particle candidate for dark matter? Well, in theory supersymmetry (or SUSY, for short) could have solve all three of these problems. In fact, if it solves the first one alone, there will be definitive experimental signatures for it at the Large Hadron Collider. Well, the LHC has completed its first run, and found nothing. What does this mean for theoretical physics, for SUSY in particular, and what are the implications for string theory? A very clear explanation is given here; it might be time to start hammering in those coffin nails."
"it not coming through with what was hoped"
I think Science is not about confirming what we want to believe, but more just learning how things work.
You're right that the LHC does it's job; the Higgs Boson is one of the century's biggest discoveries. And, incidentally, that confirmation was exactly what many hoped for. And disproving string theory was also something some hoped for.
So I don't understand where the grumpy comes from. It's been a spectacular success.
That's like complaining that the Michelson-Morley failed to measure the presence of the lumineferes ether, something scientists thought was very likely to exist. Science advances when you get a surprising result, not when you see what you expected. If the statistics support this, it is a MUCH more interesting result than finding the Higgs which was pretty much were people expected it.