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Saturday, December 21, 2013

More evidence against SUSY

Here is the evidency against supersymmetry (SUSY):
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.
The LHC has also failed to find evidence for SUSY, but the leading experts are unfazed:
The embarrassing fact of no SUSY at the LHC does get fleeting mention, but John Schwarz assures everyone that in his view, there is no question that superpartners exist, whether or not the LHC ever sees them. The multiverse is seen as the answer to all problems, ...
SUSY is mathematically interesting, and has some conceptual appeals, but it conflicts with the evidence. Are we scientists or not? It is time to accept reality.


Update: Here is a Slashdot comment:
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 f*** 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.
Supersymmetry is not really simpler or more elegant. It requires twice as many particles and about five times as many free parameters. We would never have any hope of determining those parameters.

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