Since I was old enough to read about particle physics, I’ve been reading about how one possible set of solutions to explain why we have the particles we have in our universe would require the existence of a massive zoo of particles that that bring the population of integer spin bosons and ½ integer spin fermions into symmetry. Quarks would be paired with squarks, neutrinos with sneutrinos, gluons with gluinos, w bosons with winos, and b bosons with binos. It is all a bit ridiculous.
And for as long as I’ve been old enough to be reading about particle physics, folks have been predicting that the next update to this or that particle accelerator should allow the lightest mass super symmetric particles to be discovered.
With a decade of discoveries from the ATLAS and CMS detectors on the Large Hadron Collider behind us, researchers are starting to say that it may be time to admit that super symmetric particles, as they’d been predicted, just aren’t out there waiting to be discovered.
May this theory of far too many particles rest in peace and torture students no more.