Eideard

Results from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have all but killed the simplest version of an enticing theory of sub-atomic physics.

Researchers failed to find evidence of so-called “supersymmetric” particles, which many physicists had hoped would plug holes in the current theory. Theorists working in the field have told BBC News that they may have to come up with a completely new idea.

Data were presented at the Lepton Photon science meeting in Mumbai. They come from the LHC Beauty (LHCb) experiment, one of the four main detectors situated around the collider ring at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern) on the Swiss-French border.

According to Dr Tara Shears of Liverpool University, a spokesman for the LHCb experiment: “It does rather put supersymmetry on the spot”…

The experiment looked at the decay of particles called “B-mesons” in hitherto unprecedented detail. If supersymmetric particles exist, B-mesons ought to decay far more often than if they do not exist. There also ought to be a greater difference in the way matter and antimatter versions of these particles decay.

The results had been eagerly awaited following hints from earlier results, most notably from the Tevatron particle accelerator in the US, that the decay of B-mesons was influenced by supersymmetric particles.

LHCb’s more detailed analysis however has failed to find this effect.

This failure to find indirect evidence of supersymmetry, coupled with the fact that two of the collider’s other main experiments have not yet detected supersymmetic particles, means that the simplest version of the theory has in effect bitten the dust…

The worry is that the basic idea of supersymmetry might be wrong. “It’s a beautiful idea. It explains dark matter, it explains the Higgs boson, it explains some aspects of cosmology; but that doesn’t mean it’s right.

“It could be that this whole framework has some fundamental flaws and we have to start over again and figure out a new direction,” he said.

There can be more varied, implicitly more complex variations on the supersymmetry theory; but, for many young physicists – or old physicists with youngish brains – it’s time to start all over again.