The World is (Sadly) Not Supersymmetric

A quick digression to casually drop some award-worthy science: I have simple proof from first principles that the universe is not supersymmetric.

For those not in the field, a little quick background. In the ’70s, some incredible physicists came up with an idea for how all the different types of particles in fundamental physics could secretly be related to each other, even particles of polar opposite types (we call them fermions and bosons). This relationship was a kind of symmetry, and it was just so powerful it was like a supersymmetry.

The mathematical theory is incredibly beautiful, it’s easy to see why it’s had a constant presence in theoretical physics ever since, even being a crucial part of modern string theory. Unfortunately, over the years the lack of experimental evidence has led a lot of the community to give up on it as a viable description of Nature, but there are some hold-outs and absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

But in fact, there is evidence of absence in this case. It’s one of those things that’s so simple it’s easy to overlook, but once you see it, you see it.

It turns out that at the very least, a supersymmetric world would need twice as many fundamental particles as we know about. This was known right away, and physicists got to work naming these hypothetical new particles—that’s where the problem appears.

Nature is beautiful. She is elegant. She is simple, yet complex. And she has standards. When we started naming fundamental particles “electrons,” “photons,” “mesons,” and cool things like that, she let us have nuclear power. But when we named the building blocks of nuclear matter “quarks,” she was justifiably hurt. To this day, the strong nuclear force is one of the most difficult, intractable fields of physics and we have only ourselves to blame.

So when we set about naming potential supersymmetric particles and asked Nature to give us things called “neutralinos,” “squarks,” and “gluinos,” we should have known right there that the theory was hopelessly lost. Look wherever you like, as long as you like, you will never find these things, Nature would never suffer such an indignity.

Fortunately, there is a moral to the story: looks matter. Nature is a classy lady, you’ve got to look good and ask politely if you want her help.