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27. Natural Reality / B. Modern Physics / 5. Unified Models / c. Supersymmetry

[every particle once had a super-partner]

5 ideas
Supersymmetry has extra heavy bosons and heavy fermions [New Sci.]
     Full Idea: Supersymmetry posits heavy boson partners for all fermions, and heavy fermions for all bosons.
     From: New Scientist writers (Why the Universe Exists [2017], 02)
     A reaction: The main Fermions are electron, proton and quark. Do extra bosons imply extra forces? Peter Higgs favours supersymmetry.
Only supersymmetry offers to incorporate gravity into the scheme [New Sci.]
     Full Idea: Peter Higgs says he is a fan of supersymmetry, largely because it seems to be the only route by which gravity can be brought into the scheme.
     From: New Scientist writers (Why the Universe Exists [2017], 03)
     A reaction: Peter Higgs proposed the Higgs boson (now discovered). This seems a very good reason to favour supersymmetry. A grand unified theory that left out gravity doesn't seem to be unified quite grandly enough.
The evidence for supersymmetry keeps failing to appear [New Sci.]
     Full Idea: The old front-runner theory, supersymmetry, has fallen from grace as the Large Hadron Collider keeps failing to find it.
     From: New Scientist writers (Why the Universe Exists [2017], 07)
Supersymmetry says particles and superpartners were unities, but then split [New Sci.]
     Full Idea: The key to supersymmetry is that in the high-energy soup of the early universe, particles and their superpartners were indistinguishable. Each pair existed as single massless entities. With expansion and cooling this supersymmetry broke down.
     From: New Scientist writers (Why the Universe Exists [2017], 08)
To combine the forces, they must all be the same strength at some point [Hesketh]
     Full Idea: If all the forces are to combine, at some point they must all be the same strength, and Supersymmetry (SuSy) makes this happen.
     From: Gavin Hesketh (The Particle Zoo [2016], 10)
     A reaction: This sounds like an impressive reason for favouring supersymmetry - as long as you have an a priori preference for everything combining.