Nature's Blueprint: Supersymmetry and the Search for a Unified Theory of Matter and Force
Dan Hooper
Language: English
Pages: 162
ISBN: 0061558362
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The first accessible book on a theory of physics that explains the relationship between the particles and forces that make up our universe.For decades, physicists have been fascinated with the possibility that two seemingly independent aspects of our world-matter and force-may in fact be intimately connected and inseparable facets of nature. This idea, known as supersymmetry, is considered by many physicists to be one of the most beautiful and elegant theories ever conceived. According to this theory, however, there is much more to our universe than we have witnessed thus far. In particular, supersymmetry predicts that for each type of particle there must also exist others, called superpartners. To the frustration of many particle physicists, no such superpartner particles have ever been observed. As the world's most powerful particle accelerator-the Large Hadron Collider-begins operating in 2008, this may be about to change. By discovering the forms of matter predicted by supersymmetry, this incredible machine is set to transform our current understanding of the universe's laws and structure, and overturn the way that we think about matter, force, space, and time.
Nature's Blueprint explores the reasons why supersymmetry is so integral to how we understand our world and describes the incredible machines used in the search for it. In an engaging and accessible style, it gives readers a glimpse into the symmetries, patterns, and very structure behind the universe and its laws.
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revealed groups of quarks bound up together in mesons and baryons, but never a quark by itself. This is like observing the atoms of the periodic table, but never detecting a lone proton, neutron, or electron. So what keeps us from discovering lone quarks? The answer to this question is that quarks are absolutely bound together and confined inside mesons and baryons. You can try all you want to tear apart a meson or a baryon into its constituent quarks, but you will never succeed. The more the
there is a simple way to do exactly this. In particular, the prevention of proton decay in supersymmetric models can be ensured by a physical law, known as the conservation of R-parity. R-parity is simply a value, or number, that every kind of particle has—just like electric charge, spin, strangeness, and many other quantum properties. The R-parity of each kind of particle is determined by a simple formula: PR = (-1)3(B-L)+2S. Here, the symbols B, L, and S denote the particle’s baryon number
the Standard Model itself. It was a collaboration that paid off immensely. Over the next few years, they published a number of groundbreaking papers together. It was in one of these papers that the first modern grand unified theory was proposed. But the work of Georgi and Glashow did not come out of thin air. A couple of years earlier, two physicists by the names of Jogesh Pati and Abdus Salam had written a pair of papers that made the seemingly outrageous suggestion that leptons and quarks
forces—excluding gravity—in a remarkably simple and elegant fashion. Supersymmetry, physicists now understand, is an essential feature of these theories. Although GUTs can be simple and elegant, without supersymmetry they are sick. Considering only the known forms of matter, the three quantum forces almost merge together into a single GUT force at very high energies, but not quite. If supersymmetry is included, however, they come together perfectly. Additionally, the mathematical structure
cornerstones of physics had been overthrown. But the revolution in physics was only beginning. DIRAC POSSESSED A NUMBER of rather peculiar personality traits. He was a shy and sometimes meek individual, and he struggled in personal relationships throughout his life. Some have suggested that this was in large part due to the personality of Dirac’s father, who himself was said to be unsociable, coarse, and cynically dark-natured. As a boy, Dirac ate dinner each night alone with his father, who
