What is Supersymmetry?

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Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, how do you convince the government to give you ten billion dollars? Oh, you just have to promise an aircraft carrier or two. I think that's right. That's about the cost of one. But it's also kind of the cost of a big physics experiment, right, that's true. Although I didn't personally get the check for ten billion dollars for the large H. John collider. But you're write a bunch of world governments all chipped in and spent a lot of money on a physics experiment, right, And and I imagined that in each of those countries there had to be some physicists who went up to the government officials and said, hey, gave was this money to discover this thing or that thing? Right? Um? Yeah, Well, they don't send me to pitch these things to the government, probably very good reason. I'm unusual in particle physics. I think most particle physicists like to make more concrete predictions about what we might find. My view is that we should just sell the exploration. But I think the one you're referring to is a kind of a famous area in particle physics about the storage for the search for supersymmetry. Exactly a lot of people thought we were going to find supersymmetry at the large a John Collider. So far nothing. I think I saw that movie from the eighties, wasn't it called Despritley Seeking Susie. That's right, supersymmetry is short and sometimes as Susie Susie here, give me a billion dollars, I'll find her. Okay, Um, you start looking and I'll send you a chet. Sounds good. I'll be right back. Hi. I'm Organ and I'm Daniel, and welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio, in which we take things in the universe and explain them to you. Things that are super, things that are not so super, things that are symmetrical, and things that are asymmetrical, things that are antithetical to everything you believe in, but actually true. That's right. Today on the podcast, we're going to talk about a pretty kind of it's kind of a corner of particle physics, right and it's it's probably not super well known, but it is it can have incredible implications for our entire theory about the universe. Right. Yeah, it's sort of like particle physicists big hope. Right, it's like a beautiful idea that everybody really really wishes were true. It's solve a bunch of problems. It would work really well, it would be gorgeous. Everybody wants us to find it. Yeah, that's right. Today on the program, we're going to talk about super symmetry. What is it? Not just everyday symmetry, not just good symmetry, not just extra symmetry, but super not just mild mannered Tonian, superpowered flying symmetry. That's right, supersymmetry. It's supposed to be the next big thing in physics. You know. It's motivated by looking at the equations and thinking this doesn't quite fit together. How can we make this prettier? How can we find something that's simpler, that hangs together in a way that that satisfies us aesthetically. You know, that's sort of surprising how much beauty we search for sometimes in physics. Yeah, that's it's kind of interesting that physicists think about beauty in their equations, right, Like, isn't that a subjective quality? Completely subjective? Absolutely, But you know it's a very important guiding principle, Like it goes all the way back to Acam's razor. We prefer simple explanations over complex ones. Right, If your theory has one moving part, it's simpler than something that has two moving parts or ten moving parts. Right. Even also just in your life, right, you prefer simpler explanations to answer the questions you have. Right, So is it more about elegant Do you think like that's an elegant solution or an elegant answer in that it's it's simple and directly to the point. Yeah, And I think it goes to the questions we have as humans. You know, I want to know how was the universe put together? And I'd love if that answer was short, you know, if it was simple. If the answer to the question like how is the universe organized is like a huge list of what every single particle in the universe is supposed to do, then that's not really simplification. Right. In some sense, the search for simplicity is inherent. It's core to physics, right. That's what physics is is take everything we observe and describe in terms of a few equations. Right. Well, I mean you're you're basically looking for laws, right, I mean that's the idea you know, the idea of a law is is something that's applicable to many situations and not just specific situations, right, exactly. You want you want rules that generalize, Right. You want to measure something here and know you can apply it later. You want to say, oh, I studied this baseball's ocean, now I know how the next baseball is going to move. Right. You don't want to a rule that applies a different rule applies to every baseball. Yeah, Like you can't have a government that runs with a huge book that says, all right, if a guy named Whorehead does a podcast and he does this and that's not allowed, or if he does this, that's not allowed. But then if it's a guy named Daniel, then he can't do this or that of that. You sort of want rule that applies to a general rule that applies to everyone. YEA, Well, you know, I wouldn't mind having special rule just for me. Daniel doesn't have to pay taxes, Daniel can drive as fast as he likes. That would be nice. But you're right, it's not a sustainable way to do it. And and it's not just not sustainable, you know, I think the whole job of physics is to come up with generalizable laws. And so we've done this a lot of times in physics. We've said, hey, look at this um electricity is kind of similar to magnetism. Can we simplify things and describe it in terms of just one idea electro magnetism. Oh look, you know this piece fits together with that piece. It turns out, you know, it's it's all part of the same thing, right, or like a discovering F equals m A. And you find that this lab applies to a whole bunch of things, and it helps you in many many situations, right, yeah, exactly, you know, and we do this a lot. We just were stumbling over stuff in physics and we don't necessarily know what connects to what. So, like, you know, it's like finding the front of the elephant, and then a hundred years later you discover, oh, elephants have butts too, And then finally somebody says, wait, put them together. You get a whole animal. Right, it makes much more sense. Elephant heads and elephant butts are not separate ideas. Um, I want to be the guy, the person who wins that Nobel prize the discovery of the elephant but yeah, exactly. You can put that on your tombstone. Um. But that's the idea, is like connecting different observations that happened to you know, happen at different times or different places, and realizing they're part of the whole. And so that's the driving ideas. Let's look at what we know and look for patterns, look for symmetry, symmetries that we can be used to simplify things. So that's what this supersymmetry is all about. It it's about simplifying the equations of the universe. Right. It's like finding like a finding a kind of another set of patterns that make it easier to understand or easier to um put together right exactly. And it's a theoretical exercise, right you say, hey, I notice these patterns in the universe, and then you can test that. You can say is this pattern real? Is it true? If it is, then I expect to find this new particle for example. The patterns usually predict something new, and amazingly sometimes that works, like that's exactly what happened with the Higgs Boson. Higgs and other folks were like, hey, look, the universe doesn't quite make sense. This is weird wrinkle that wrinkled goes away if you add one more particle, and then we actually found the Higgs boson. So like this strategy has worked. It's not just like something we you know, enjoy doing that has worked, right, Well, it's it's a it's a pretty cool word, supersymmetry. And and just to be sure, it is one word. Like you you don't write superspace symmetry. You write it like Superman. It's like supersymmetry. Yeah, we have long meetings about punctuation and particle physics, you know, whether to hyphenate where a common goes. And because people come from all over the world, they have different ideas about how to do this kind of stuff. But yeah, we all agree supersymmetry is one word. And it's very commonly abbreviated as susie s U s WA because supersymmetries were just way too long to say. Right. Well, I'm sure a lot of people know susie or two um, but we were wondering how many people out there had heard of this word supersymmetry. I know, it's basically one of the most important motivators for governments to spend billions of dollars on an experiment. So you think maybe there was a pr campaign, Maybe people know what this is, maybe they have an opinion about it. And so, as usual, Daniel went out there and ask people in the street if they knew what the word supersymmetry means. Here's what people had to say. Yeah, I've heard about it, but I don't know what it is. I've heard about it in some lectures I was listening to from from from Fineman I think, and Paul to Rock No no idea. Who would you guess just from the name, I would have to do something symmetrical, thanks very much from Big Bang Theory Ya from the TV show. Just heard it, but I don't really know what it means to be. To guess, what do you think big supersymmetry might be? Probably has to do with symmetry and how you make things easier in science, probably because usually like everything that symmetrical makes it easier because you can divide and a half when it's too geometry, or it's just like easier to apply some rules and equations on it. So I guess it would just be like a simplification of something really complicated. Okay, awesome, I don't know what that means. But my guess is like something about math, like thanks very much, assumes something is symmetrical, or like something is like balanced, or even maybe no, no, never, no, I don't have to guess what it might be. What do you think it might be symmetrical? So, as usual, the Big Bang Theory has educated Americans and what a word is without explaining what it actually means. I bet you plus love and hate that show like you probably you probably don't love the writing or the way that physicists are portrayed. But at the same time, you know, it's sort of educated so many people in the words and the kind of maybe a little bit of the concepts in particle physics. Right right as they're laughing and making fun of physicists, they accidentally learned a few pieces of vocabulary. There is a positive side of that. You're right, you wouldn't You wouldn't let people laugh at you too if they ended up learning something. Isn't that the premise of this entire podcast? Listen laugh learn something? Anyway? Well, there you go. You're right up there with Sheldon and and I don't even even know the other characters. But no, no, I would totally humiliate myself if everybody in the world could learn a little bit more physics. Whatever you want, you want to do a dunk tank, you want me to wear a silly costume, sign me up on man. That should totally be our live traveling show for this podcast. You have a dunk tank with like if you answer a physics question correctly, you get the dunk Daniel with. You have like a short Anger's dunk tank. You know, oh, like is he dunked or is he not done? Behind a cave with like a box and people throw things and then it's all connected to some quantum particle and you may or may not get wet mm hmm. So I guess that will be my sacrifice for the art. Right, That's how I'm going to make sure that I'm suffering for our art. Right. That's good because my creative partner is a joy to worker. Good. He sounds like a nice guy. He's an amazing, amazing um anyway. But yeah, so not a lot of people have heard of the concept. I mean, everyone knows what super beans, and I imagine a lot of most people out there know what symmetry means. But when you put it together, suddenly it's a it's a new word, right. Yeah. You could hear people trying to figure it out on the fly, speculating what it might mean based on zero knowledge and just the atomology. And yeah, so nobody had an idea supersymmetry needs to be better sold, right right, Well, let's get into it all right, um, And for me, you know, I think we just let's talk about what symmetry means in the first place. I mean, I know that in the common usage, symmetry just means that it's kind of like a like a mirror image, like something symmetrically something else. If it's if it looks the same as if you were looking at it in a mirror. Right. Yeah. It's all about patterns, right, is can you do two things look similar? Right? And Um? For particles, we find a lot of these patterns among the particles. And what we do is we instead of thinking about the individual particles the way you were talking about individual laws for each person, we try to think about the particles together in groups. So for example, you have the electron, and then you have the electrons, antiparticle, the positron. Right, we don't really think about the electron and the positron is separate particles. We think about the we think of them as two sides of a coin, right, the positive and negative version of this part particle, and we think of it as one concept. It's kind of like a it's the same except you flip a sign or you know. It's kind of like if you you put them electron in front of the mirror, one of them would be spinning one way, either one would be spinning kind of the other way. Right. Yeah, it's like you don't think about the heads separately from the tails of a coin, right, There just different sides of the same coin, literally, And we think about particles the same way. And because every particle seems to have an antiparticle, you know, with some funny exceptions like the photon, that it's a very useful strategy. We notice this relationship between positrons and electrons, between muans and anti muons, and so that's a really important symmetry and it it helps us ask questions. Right, We're like, well, why is there this symmetry? What does it mean? We think it reveals something deep about the universe. We still don't know the answer to that one, right, Like why do particles have antiparticles. We have no idea, but I think it's an important clue about something fundamental about the universe. So we're always looking for these patterns, not just because it helps us simplify and right thing down more quickly, but because we were hopeful that their clues about what's going on on the deeper level. Right. So, okay, so that's what symmetry means. It's it's kind of like um an electron having a mirror image of itself called the anti electron. That's right. But symmetry works in lots of different ways, like there are other symmetries in particle physics. If you remember the episode where we introduced sort of the standard model, the electron has the anti electron, but also has symmetries in other ways, Like there's the mun and the taw. These particles are exactly the same as the electron, but they're heavier, right, So the electron has two kinds of symmetries. That's a symmetry as well, But they're not they're not like they don't weigh the same, they just sort of act the same, that's right. There is a difference, right, So they're not the identical particle. But there's a pattern there because the electron is not the only one with too heavier cousins, right, The neutrino is too heavier cousins. The up coork has too heavier cousins, the down cork is too heavier cousins. There's something going on where every particle has two heavier versions of itself. We call the flavors. Sometimes, because we're not great in particle physics about coming with new names, adopt an existing word, which is very confusing. Wait, so that's that's a symmetry as well, these kind of heavier versions of an electron. Those are absolutely really what how is that symmetric? Because you know it imagine symmetry means like the same or mirror image. Yeah, it's just you have to change your definition of what the mirror means. Right. So in the case of positive and negative electrons, your mirror is changing the charge, right, it's changing from positive to negative. But that mirror can have lots of different kinds of reflections. Right in this case, an electron and a muon and a town. We think of its just different varieties of the same kind of particle. So sort of like a three way mirror. These particles are definitely related. Right, an electron is much more close relationship with the muon than it does with like corks. But why why do you call it a symmetry? Is it in the equation? Something about the equations that somehow you know what I mean? You can write all those particles, all those particles have the same kinds of interactions, right, they interact with the same forces. Uh, they interact with the forces in very similar ways. And so when you write down the equations, instead of writing down here, how here's how an electron works, Here's how a mun works, Here's how a tow works. Here the laws for those particles, we just write down one set of laws because they follow the same laws. There's a little bit of a difference. Each one has a different mass, right, but the laws, the basic structure of how it works is the same. Is it kind of like different solutions to the same equation? Or Well, what we don't know is why we have them, right, you're sort of suggesting like the reason we have three, right, Well, we don't know the answer to that. We don't know why there is more than one at all, Like why does this symmetry exist? And then we don't know why there are three in a four or seven or two. Right, those are deep questions. When you discover symmetry, it's helpful because, as we said, it gives you a clue about some deep questions, but doesn't always give you the answer, right, sort of raises the question. So in this case, when when you say symmetry, you kind of mean like an imperfect copy. Yeah, exactly, and the perfection there can vary, right, Like the positron of the electron are really exactly the same except for the charge um. In the case of the electron, the mu and the too, they're very similar. There are some differences, the most important one is the mass. So you can have more or less perfect symmetries. None of these symmetries are exact, so just sort of like guiding patterns that we used to organize how how we write down the equations. Okay, so if you had to, if you had to christen this thing another name, would you still call it some symmetry or would you maybe use another word? Oh? I think symmetry is a nice word. You know, symmetry shows like aesthetic purity, right, I mean, when you're looking at art, you like symmetry. But when you look at a face. Scientists have like discovered right that symmetric faces are considered the most beautiful. So I think there's a connection between symmetry and beauty and simplicity. So I like the word symmetry. Yeah, No, I think it's it's pretty nice. It's hard to spell for her young students. I've I've seen a creatively spelled in lots of different way is. But it's a nice word. Well, hold on, I'm still stuck a little bit in symmetry. So why is symmetry Plano mild manner symmetry? Why is that um important in the equations of physics because you see it or it's it's something that helps you solve the equations. Well, it's for the same reason that you um you said earlier about like writing laws. You wouldn't want to write down a different law for everybody. You'd notice, Hey, I'm rinning now all the same laws, except I'm just substituting Jorge some places and Daniel in other places. Maybe I should just write one law for everybody, right, And so that's what we're doing with symmetries, is we're trying to find these patterns to simplify things. We could say, hey, look, the same laws apply to the electron and the muan and the tow. We just need to tweak this a little bit, and the same rules apply. So that's what we're going for. Maybe, Okay, So maybe when you when you say symmetry, you actually means like same rules apply. Yeah, Or you could think of it like a pattern, right, all right, So it's kind of like you might say, like a living in the US is very symmetric to living in Suitland in that blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, and it's kind of like it's it's the magrick thing that it's sort of like the same rules apply, or there's some sort of pattern between living here in the vein in Switzerland. Yeah. I don't know if there's much in common between living in Switzerland living in the US. I've lived in both places. They're pretty different experiences. Um, I guess they both eat yogurt. Super symmetric. It's not a super symmetric analogy, Daniel, Exactly right. That was not a super analogy about symmetry. It's an underwhelming symmetry, yeah, exactly. But you know, you could look for example, what are the laws of different countries, And you might say, hey, look, there is these underlying things everybody wants to the value of property and everyone who wants life, and everyone wants liberty, and you could say those are inherent about being human. Is something about forming a human society that makes people want these things, and so we should encode those as the bedrock principles of humanity. Right, so we call those human rights. You so and and and you've learned something about humanity that way by identifying in these core principles. Right. So it's kind of like a perspective. It's like when you say you want the laws of physics to be symmetric, you're saying you want them to be kind of a universal, and you want them to be applicable to many different things, and you want them to not very on a Willie Neely basis, wanted to be kind of rock solid. Yeah, exactly. Symmetries allow us to write these things more compactly, write to write down fewer laws because we identify patterns and so the same laws can apply to different kinds of phenomena. Right, Okay, So that's kind of regular mild manner. Clark Kent glasses wearing. Symmetry is some sort of like a perspective on the laws of physics that say that it's, um, it's sort of applicable everywhere. So then um, but now they're supersymmetry. Are you ready to put spandex on the look like the clothes off and see what he's wearing underneath? When making a family friendly podcast, Well, he's taking his clothes up, but he's got an outfit on underneath. Folks. Okay, well it's get into supersymmetry, but first let's take a quick break. Okay, so that's a that's a pretty good breakdown of symmetry, which is, um, it's kind of like the perspective that things should, um, they have a pattern in nature and things should have fundamental laws that don't change. Is because you move from one place to the other or from one particle to the other. Right, Yeah, it's yeah exactly. It's like if you notice, hey, there's sort of two different kinds of things. What can we find that relates them? How can we think of them the same way? Right? Do we have to have two different totally separate categories or can we say there's a relationship between them and understand them and sort of in the context of a larger idea. Right, it's like, why do we have Democrats and Republicans? Oh, they're both just political parties, right, that's sort of the symmetry between that. Okay, so then now let's get into the topic of the podcast. Um supersymmetry. So that's like the regular symmetry, but more so or I guess the question is like, what are an all symmetries super? Like? What's special about supersymmetries? Supersymmetry is called super because the folks that named it were like grandiose in their ideas. Um, it's called super because it sort of encompasses the whole set of particles. Here's the idea. The idea is that we noticed that there are kind of two kinds of particles out there that we've discovered. There's the particles that make up stuff, right, the matter particles, electrons and corks and all that kind of stuff. Those particles have a technical name called fermions. Then there's a different kind of particle. These are These are particles that describe the forces. So the ones that like are responsible for electromagnetism, the photon or the weak nuclear force the W and Z boson or the strong force the glue on. These particles are different. We call them bosons, and the difference between them is technical and we don't need to get deeply into it. We have these two different kinds of particles, the fermions which are matter particles, and the bosons, which are the force particles, and I always get them confused. So maybe for this podcast, let's just call the matter particles and force particles. About that? Sure that sounds good, a matter particles and force particles, And that's odd to people who are like, that's weird that we have two different kinds, And they thought, what if what if there's sort of a symmetry, right, what if there's a connection, Like what if every force particle had some sort of matter particle that was like its reflection, right, imagine like this is the mirror now, force versus matter. What if every matter particle had a corresponding force particle and every forest particle had a corresponding matter particle. Wouldn't that be pretty right? Wouldn't that be a nice connection between these two? Otherwise just disparate groups of particles, These just two lists that we have. Yeah, well that's weird, isn't it, because force and matter are so different. But you're saying that in particle physics. In quantum physics, you just treat them all a particles. We do treat them as particles. Yeah, and forced particles and matter particles we treat them a little bit different in quantum field theory. Um. But we'd like to see the connection between them, right. We have like this one group of matter particles and this other group of force particles, and we're wondering, like, why do we have two different kinds, and why is there this one list longer than that other list? Is there a way we can sort of fit them all together into one grand symmetry that I dare say a super symmetry? Right? Oh, I see, So, like the matter particles are maybe symmetric among themselves, and the forced particles are maybe symmetric among themselves. And so you've always had these two groups, and so you're wondering, are they maybe just reflections of each other across board? Yeah? Exactly the problem is that there isn't really an easy way to make them correspond to each other. Like there's no forced particle that corresponds to the electron and there's no like matter particle that corresponds to the photon for example. So if this is gonna work, you have to invent a reflection particle for each one. Right, so the every matter particle have to invent a new force particle that we haven't yet found, and for every force particle you have to invent a new matter particle that we haven't yet seen. Wait, so like, um, if I have a matter particle like the electron or like a cork, you're saying that if there if there are supersymmetry, then that means that there's a forced particle that is just like the cork or the electron, but it's a forced particle and something about a change that makes it a forced particle and not a matter particle. Exactly, if you have that symmetry, there should be a reflection for every particle, just like well, we know there are particles and antiparticles. So if there's some particle out there, you say, well, it should have an antiparticle, right in the same way we say, well the electron, there should be some forced particle that corresponds to it, and there should be some matter correspond particle that corresponds to the photon. Why couldn't you have what couldn't the photon be the supersymmetric version of the electron? Do you know what I mean? Like, why can't we just match them up? Well, we want them to have the same mass, right, because that would be the nicest symmetry. And so the photon of the electron have nothing like the same mass, and then what would match up with the muan right, and what we match up with the tow So we want sort of all the symmetries in the matter particles to be reflected in the symmetries and the force particles, um. And then there's a bunch of other technical reasons why that just can't work. Well, the important thing is that they have really silly names, right, That's the away from this exactly. So what they did was they saying, well, we can't just invent a bunch of crazy new names for all these particles, right, we need a name for the particle that's the force version of the electron, and the particle that's the force version of the cork, and the particle that's the matter version of the photon. So they came up with a rule for how to name the reflection particles. And the rule is if you take a matter particle and you want to name its force reflection, right, the particle the force particle. That's it's sort of supersymmetric partner's hypothetical. Hypothetically, we haven't discovered them. Like if there's a Swiss version of korhe, it would be named this. That's right. And what you do is you put an S in front of the name, right, so you have a particle. The super symmetric version is a sparticle. And so for example, the electron, it's super symmetric version. The fourth version of it is the selectron. Why is it one s and not two s? Is? You know, like supersymmetry should be like this selectron. And that's why because we don't want to be sounding like all the time in our meetings. It gets pretty silly, like we have the top cork and it's super symmetric version is the stop cork, right, or the bottom cork and it's verse. It's super symmetric version is the spottom cork. Right. Wow, that sounds like like an invitation for funny meetings exactly. Um, everybody who learns these rules has a good giggle over it. For a few weeks and then it just becomes a part of your day. Um and and and then in the other direction, if you have a force particle like the photon, and you need a name for the matter version of it, you add eno to the end. So, for example, a photon is a force particle, it's a matter version would be a photino. So if there's a Daniel in Switzerland and you're wondering, what would the Daniel be named in the US, it would be Daniel Leno. Daniel Leno, Yeah, exactly, Daniel Leno and sorehe that's the super symmetric version of this podcast Daniel universe. But can you can you just do that? Can you just post the existence of a force particle you've never seen? Wouldn't that? Isn't that weird? Isn't that like making up a whole new force in the universe? Exactly it is. But that's what you want to do, right when you make a when you observe a pattern, the next thing to do is to say, well, if this pattern holes, if it really is true, what can I predict that hasn't been seen before. That's how you test it, right, That's how they That's how the Higgs boson was verified, they saw this pattern. The pattern is complete. Only of the Higgs boson exists, and they looked for it found it. Boom pattern probably correct. In the case of supersymmetry. You say, well, what if every particle has this supersymmetric reflection. If so, that all these other particles should exist. And it's crazy because what you're doing is doubling the number of particles. Right, you say, Okay, we have twelve matter particles and five for particles. Now I'm going to say we have twenty four particles and ten particles. Right, So it's um, it's a big prediction. Yeah, it's It's kind of like saying, hey, I have a theory. I think that for every person in the US, there's an there's a Swiss version in Switzerland of that person. Everyone in in Switzerland has a as version in the US and n't seen any of them yet. Yeah, they're all hidden somewhere underneath, underneath, and exactly. And when you make a theory of physics, you have to explain all of that. You have to say, here's something you could do to prove my theory is correct. Here's a prediction I can make. You will go and find this particle, and you also have to explain why we haven't seen it yet, right, because if they're all these other particles out there in the universe that the universe can make, you have to explain why we didn't see them yet. And the standard answer was, until very recently, the standard answer was why they were a little too heavy. That those, for some reason, the supersymmetric version of our particles, were all too heavy to just like hang out in the universe. They didn't last for very long because they were so heavy. So you have to give me ten billion dollars to build a particle collider so I can create the energy density needed to make these particles that would then prove my crazy theory, right, which would then prove my crazy theory if we had found it. Yeah, you're like, it's not my fault that you can't see them. They they're just kind of a little overweight. Yeah, exactly, they're a little overweight. And that was the key that, right there is the crux of it. We had to say, all right, if you give us ten billion dollars, will build a collider that's such and such big that can search for particles up to a certain energy, because remember, the bigger the collider, the more energy you're pouring into it, right, because you can push the particles faster and faster, which means the heavier new particles you can make. It's directly correlation, like the more money you spend, the bigger the collider, the heavier particles you can make. Than The question was, is this collider big enough to find supersymmetry? Is supersymmetry sort of in the next chunk of unexplored territory that can be searched by this collider. Okay, so that that's what supersymmetry is. It's the theory that all the particles have these crazy twins hidden out there in the universe, and so if you give me ten billion dollars, I'm pretty I'm pretty sure I'm gonna find them. That's right. And it was a fun idea, and it was invented in the seventies and eighties and played with and um people thought, hey, this is kind of cool. It's cute mathematically, but it's kind of a big prediction, you know. But then people notice that not only was acute mathematically, but it actually solved a different problem we have in there in physics. And so if it was true, it would be like really nice. It would like tie up a bunch of different loose ends all at the same time. Oh, I see it's Um, it's a crazy theory, but it's the answer to more than one puzzle in physics. Yeah. For example, one puzzle we have in physics is like, why does the Higgs boson have the mass that it does. We don't know why. Um, we can calculate what massive should have, and the calculation is kind of complicated. But the short version of the story is that force particles make them make it push the mass in one direction, and matter particles push in the other direction. And so and these and these are really big pushes right there, push it by by huge amounts. And so the fact that the two sort of balance out to give us a Higgs Boson that's not like ridiculously heavy. It seems like a big coincidence. You know. It's like, Um, you have two different numbers that happen to almost cancel out, and you think, oh, there's no relationship between them. It's a coincidence. Well, if every force particle has a matter particle, then it's very natural for them to cancel each other. Out because there's a symmetry there, right, and everything that's pushing one way, it gets automatically pushed the other way. So it would sort of solve that problem, like in a really nice, nice way. Like when I first heard that idea of was like, Oh, that's clever, that's beautiful. That's like a really nice natural explanation, right, because a coincidence in the universe. You guys don't like coincidences, Yeah, coincidences beg the question You're like, is that really a coincidence or is there an explanation? Right? Um, It's like if you discover, hey, this supermarket seems to sell the same number of hot dogs and hot dog buns every year, I wonder why. Right, Well, it turns out people buy hot dogs and hot dog buns together for a reason, right, They're connected. Um, And so you want to discover these apparent coincidences because they tell you something about the universe or about hot dogs. It's kind of like if you if you find a if you do find an identical Jorge in Switzerland, you'd be like, that's too much of a coincidence. They must have there must be something going on that somehow split them apart. And put them in each country. Exactly. If I ever went to Switzerland and met soorhe, then thank you, Um, yeah, exactly, I would think that that's a clue. Right, there's something going on. And so that's the idea of supersymmetry, and if it's solved a bunch of problems, it might even explain dark matter, right, And so it's a really it's a tantalizing idea because they could they could kill a lot of birds with one stone, kill a lot of matter and forces and one Yeah, you can win five Nobel Prizes with one discovery. Wow. All right, let's get into whether or not this is actually real and if we you have found evidence for it. But first let's take a quick break. All right, So that's supersymmetry. We um, we broke it down a little bit, and you said it might explain dark matter. What does that mean? Well, there's a particle. A one of the super symmetric particles is something that doesn't turn into anything else. It just sort of hangs out because it's the lightest one can't turn into anything else. And so if it exists, it might be the dark matter particle. Right, So it might be the dark matter is made of particles, and the particles is made out of might be super symmetric particles. Wow, is it the super symmetric version of the photon? Like that would be cool? Yeah, exactly. The opposite of light is dark matter. Let's that's that's beautiful. We're writing right there there you go. See you're searching for beauty in your answers. Right. You don't want just any answer, you want poetry, right, and that's what this is for us. Symmetry is the physicist version of poetry, except it doesn't rhyme. Oh, I know it doesn't rhyme because all the particles and with the same kenoes you write a pretty silly song using only supersymmetric particle names. Yeah exactly. Okay, So let's get into whether it's real or not. So is this theory real? Have they found evidence for it? We have exactly zero evidence that supersymmetry is really exactly we have symmetric So in a way, you sort of confirmed the beauty of the universe. No, the only thing supersymmetry has going for it is its elegance. Is its beauty is that it would solve these problems. But you know, nature is not interested in the ideas that we think are beautiful. There are lots of gorgeous theories out there that turned out to not be true. And so we you know, a lot of people said we would find supersymmetry and we turned on the Large Change and collider um, but we didn't. They thought you would find like these crazy hypothetical particles to just start popping out of the collider. Yeah, and it's pretty exciting when you turn on a new collider, a collider and an energy nobody has ever collided particles that before. You could discover something in minutes, right, It really is like landing on a new new planet that nobody's ever been to before, nobody's ever created collisions of this energy. So it could be the first time you had enough energy to make these particles, and it could be that they're just like you know, flew out of the collider like crazy. So the first few days the Large Hadron Collider, everybody was very excited, Right, We're like, what's in the data, what's in the data? Did you discover supersymmetry? Is it there? Is it there? And there was a big community of theorists who really believed that we would find it and that we would find it very early on, but we didn't. So far. The only thing we found that the large Hadron collider that we didn't know about before was the Higgs boson. Huge triumph, but um. A lot of people sold supersymmetry as a potential discovery of the large hGe On collider and so far not there. Maybe they were just hedging in case they didentified the Higgs. They're like, Wow, we might not find the Higgs, but we might find Susie. Yeah, it could have been that we didn't see the Higgs, right. We weren't guaranteed right, We didn't know um. And one question is like how far away is Susie? How heavy are these particles? Are these particles real and part of the nature, but the large hGe On collider is just not quite big enough to find them? Right? Or is it that there there's like super far away and you'd have to build a collider the size of the Solar System to make them. We don't really have a good answer to that question. We don't really good theoretical clues that tell us how big the collider has to be. The theory doesn't tell you what's the maximum, Like you can just keep going. The theory doesn't tell you, well, if you haven't found them by this mask, then they probably don't exist. Right, the most beautiful version of supersymmetry all the particles had the same mass as their super particles. Now we know that's not true because there if the electron had a superparticle that had the same mass, we would have found it already. I like how you say the most beautiful, Like you guys have beauty contest for theories, simplest, most poetic theories, right, Um, you know, and uh, some of these some of these series look great in the swimsuit competition. They stumble when they asked them of geopolitics, but you know, they do their best, and then the judges flip a sign saying ten seven. You can have versions of supersymmetry where the supersymmetric particles are like, way, way, way too heavy for us to ever practically make them in any collider we would build, So we're not guaranteed. Yeah, so there's different flavors of supersymmetry, and some of them are more super than others. Yeah, there's a huge number of supersymmetric theories, and we've ruled out a bunch of them, but there's a huge number left, so you can't really kill supersymmetries. It's always got another rock for it itself to hide under. Um. But as I was saying before, there was a controversy because people thought maybe the theory community was too bullish on whether the LATEC was big enough to find supersymmetry. And now that we didn't, like, you know, should they rethink how they made those arguments because we're in the beginning stages of arguing for the next collider, right, and people are wondering, what this wouldn't be big enough to find supersymmetry. How do you know you were wrong last time? Should we believe you this time? Right? Well, I don't know if I told you, but I once gave the keynote address at a supersymmetry conference. Did you give us super talk? It was you give two super talks? It was it was super ansymmetric. Did you give it forward and then backwards? That's right? I walked down stage and then I walked off stage. But no, yeah, yeah, I talked a lot of physicists that they're physicists there, and they were, you know a lot of them were like really convinced that supersymmetry was is true, and and I was like, how do you what makes you so confident or when? And it was really sort of came down to a sense of faith or a sense of like like you said, like the like this believe that the universe has to be beautiful and it has to be symmetric in this way. Yeah, a lot of people who bought that story. Personally, me not interested. I think ridiculous. I've never spent any of my professional scientific energy searching for supersymmetry, and I have no interest in it. Really. Why what makes you so down on it? There's a few reasons. Um. One is it's a bit too complex for me. I mean, you're predicting a lot of different particles, right, and it's sort of a big it's a big thing to predict. Um. I prefer a sort of simpler, more compact answer. Um. And But I think more fundamentally, I'm not into particle physics to confirm theoretical ideas. I'm not. My job is not to say yes or no to the ideas some folks have in their office. My interesting particle physics is to explore my scientific fantasy, is not to discover something that Professor x y Z predicted, But to discover something weird unanticipated, it's something that makes Professor x y Z go what that can't happen? Um, That's why I'm an experimentalist, because I think I see it as a as an exploration, right, right, But you need the theories to tell you if what you're seeing is weird or not. Right, Like, if there weren't any theories, you wouldn't know it is weird. Well, you can discover a particle that nobody's ever seen before, right and say, oh, what's this? How does it work? What does it do? How heavy is it? How does it interact? Right? What does that mean? And you know, then the theorists can get started understanding how it fits into the other patterns. But you can definitely have experiment be the leader. Right. There was a period in particle physics earlier this century where basically every time you turned on the collider you found a new particle and nobody knew what they were and it was a it was a huge mess, and it was called the particles Zoo And that one must have been really fun, you know. Um, these days I just want to just like fuzzy little particles actually I'm totally anti zoo. Um things, those are crazy. They're locking up these beautiful animals and cages. Um. That's the topic of a different podcast. So my interest in particle physics is more about looking for something unanticipated than box checking the ideas of other people. Um. But it's a huge area, like some big fraction of particle physicists search for supersymmetry. Right, But you're saying that you're telling me earlier that some people a lot of people that are have given up. They're like, all right, forget it, it's not real. M. Yeah. Well, a lot of people feel like if supersymmetry is going to be real and it's going to be natural and beautiful and explain all these things, it has to be light that you can't have super duper heavy particles. They don't like the versions of supersymmetry with the particles are too heavy for us to have found them. Yeah. Um, And so I think a good number of people have given up on it or are thinking about other ideas well. I certainly hope that you guys find that the universe is beautiful and has perfect facial structure, the symmetric and wins A lot of beauty contests. Well, I'm sure that whatever we find about the universe, it will be beautiful, and it will be symmetric, and it will be incredible. It just might not be the idea of beauty that we went out looking for. You know, when we go out and look for things on other planets, we expect to find incredible, mind blowing things. We just don't predict them in advance, right, and we embrace that. We look forward to being surprised by nature. That's the whole idea of science. Yeah. I think what you're saying is giving. They should give you the billion dollars and not this theories. My checking account is open, so people free to send me checks for billions of dollars. Yes, that's how you agree? All right? What's our Veno account? Daniel Venoll and Daniel and Jorge dot com. Yeah exactly, or you know, I accept gold blue Yon also. You know that's fine. Great. Do you accept menos and zenos? Exactly? Only a lot of them, though it takes a big pile and mean a certain arrangement. All right, thank you very much. That's a supersymmetry. I hope you guys learned what it is and it's so super and it's something that we might discover. So maybe by the time this podcast comes out, we will have a hint of supersymmetry. Or maybe it will take another hundred years. Nobody knews until then, See you next time. If you still have a question after listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you. You can find us at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge That's one Word, or email us at Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of I Heart Radio. From More podcast from my Heart Radio visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.