Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - What is Supersymmetry?

Episode Date: April 18, 2019

What's so super about this symmetry? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Oh, you just have to promise an aircraft carrier or two, I think. That's right. That's about to cost you. 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 $10 billion for the large Hajon Collider, but you're right, a bunch of world governments all chipped in and spent a lot of money on a physics experiment. Right.

And I imagine that in each of those countries, there had to be some physicists who went up to the government officials and said, hey, give us this money to discover this thing or that thing, right? Yeah, well, they don't send me to pitch these things to the government, probably for a 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.

I see. But I think the one you're referring to is kind of a famous area in particle physics about the search for... The search for supersymmetry. Exactly. A lot of people thought we were going to find supersymmetry at the Large Hadron Collider.

So far, nothing. I think I saw that movie from the 80s. Wasn't it called Desperately Seeking Susie? That's right. Supersymmetry is shortened sometimes as Susie. Suzy. Here, give me a billion dollars. I'll find her.

Okay. You start looking and I'll send you a check. Sounds good. I'll be right back. Hi, I'm Jorge. And I'm Daniel. And welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of IHeart 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 core. corner of particle physics, right? And it's probably not super well known, but 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 would 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 symmetry. Not just mild mannered symmetry, cryptonian, superpowered, flying symmetry. That's right, super symmetry. 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 could we make this prettier? How can we find something? that's simpler, that hangs together in a way that satisfies us aesthetically.

You know, that's sort of surprising how much beauty we search for sometimes in physics. Yeah, 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 Occam'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 10 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 elegance, do you think? Like, that's an elegant solution or an elegant answer in that 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 it in terms of a few equations. Right. Well, I mean, you're basically looking for laws, right? I mean, that's the idea.

You know, the idea of a law is something that's applicable to many situations and not just specific situations, right? Exactly. 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 motion. Now I know how the next baseball is going to move, right? You don't want a rule that applies, a different rule applies to every baseball.

Yeah, like you can have a government that runs with a huge book that says, all right, if a guy named Jorge does a podcast and he does this, then 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 or that or that. You sort of want a rule that applies to a general rule that applies to everyone.

Well, you know, I wouldn't mind having special rules 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 it's not just not sustainable. 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 electricity is kind of similar to magnetism can we simplify things and describe it in terms of just one idea electromagnetism? Oh look this piece fits together with that piece it turns out

it's all part of the same thing or like discovering f equals MA and you find that this law applies to a whole bunch bunch of things and it helps you in many, many situations, right? Yeah, exactly, you know, and we do this a lot. We just, we're 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 100 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. I want to be the guy, the person who wins that noble prize. The discovery of the elephant butt.

Yeah, exactly. You can put that on your tombstone. But that's the idea, it's like connecting different observations that happen 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 symmetries, symmetries that can be used to simplify things.

So that's what this concept super symmetry is all about. It's about simplifying the equations of the universe, right? It's like finding kind of another set of patterns that make it easier to understand or easier to 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 it. 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 wrinkle 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 it has worked right well 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 super space symmetry you write it like superman it's like super symmetry yeah we have uh long meetings about punctuation in particle physics, whether to hyphenate, where a comma 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

Suzy, S-U-S-Y, S-U-S-Y, because super-symetries are just way too long to say. Right. Well, I'm sure a lot of people know a Suzy or two, 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 asked people on 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 Feynman, I think, and Paul Dirac. No. No idea? What would you guess, just from the name? It would have to do something symmetrical. Okay, thanks very much. From Big Bang Theory, yeah. From the TV show, I just heard it, but I don't really know what it means, to be honest. You have to guess, what do you think big super symmetry might be? Well, it probably has to do with symmetry and how it made things easier in science, probably,

because usually, like, everything that's symmetric makes it easier because you can, like, divide in a half when it's to geometry, where 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. Great. Thanks very much. Assume something is symmetrical or like something is like balanced or even maybe?

No. No idea. You 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. what a word is without explaining what it actually means. I bet you must love and hate that show. Like, 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, you know, accidentally learn

a few pieces of vocabulary. Yeah. There is a positive side of that. You're right. You wouldn't let people laugh at you to 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 I don't 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 I'm there oh man that should totally be our live traveling show for this podcast just have a dunk tank with like a... If you answer a physics question correctly, you get to dunk Daniel... No, with like a Schrodinger's

dunk tank, you know? Oh, like, is he dunked or is he not dunk? Yeah, he's both. You're behind a cage, we have a box, and people throw things, and then it's all connected to some quantum particle and you may or may not get wet. So I guess that'll be my sacrifice

for the art, right? That's how I'm going to make sure that I'm suffering for our art. Right, yeah. That's good, because my creative partner is a joy to work with it. Good. He sounds like a nice guy. He's amazing. Amazing. Anyway. But yeah, so not a lot of people are heard of the concept.

I mean, everyone knows what super means. And I imagine a lot of most people out there know what symmetry means. But when you put it together, suddenly 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 etymology. and yeah so nobody had any idea super symmetry 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 is symmetric to 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 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 electron's antiparticle, the positron, right? We don't really think about the electron and the positron as separate particles. We think of them as two sides of a coin, right? The positive and negative version.

of this particle, right? 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 put an electron in front of the mirror, one of them would be spinning one way, the other way, right? Yeah, it's like you don't think about the heads

separately from the tails of a coin, right? They're just different sides of the same coin, literally. We think about particles the same way. And because every particle seemed 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 muons and antimunes.

And so that's a really important symmetry. And 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 anti-particles? 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 write things down more quickly, but because we're hopeful that they're clues about what's going on on the deeper level. Right. So that's what symmetry means. It's kind of like 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 symmetrons in other ways. like there's the muon and the tau. 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 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's not the only one with two heavier cousins, right? The neutrino is two heavier cousins.

The upcork has two heavier cousins. The downcork has two heavier cousins. There's something going on. where every particle has two heavier versions of itself. We call them flavors sometimes. Because we're not great in particle physics about coming with new names. We adopt an existing word, which is very confusing. Wait, so that's a symmetry as well?

These kind of heavier versions of an electron, those are... Absolutely. Really? How is that symmetric? Because, you know, I imagine symmetry means like the same or mirror image. Yeah, 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 tau, we think of as 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 has much more a close relationship with the muon than it does with, like, quarks. But why do you call it a symmetry? Is it in the equation? something about the equations that somehow

do 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 they interact with the forces in very similar ways and so when you write down the equations instead of writing down here's how an electron works here's how a muon works

here's how a tau works here are 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? Well, what we don't know is why we have them, right? You're sort of suggesting like, oh, 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, you know, four, or seven, or two, right? Those are deep questions. When you discover a symmetry, it's helpful because, as we said, it gives you a clue about some deep questions, but it doesn't always give you the answer, right? You sort of raises the question. So in this case, when you say symmetry, you kind of mean like an imperfect copy. Yeah, exactly. And the perfection there can vary, right? Like the positron and the electron

are really exactly the same except for the charge. In the case of the electron, the muon, the tau, 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 use to organize 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 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. When you look at a face, scientists have 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 pretty nice. It's hard to spell for young students.

I've seen it creatively spelled in lots of different ways, but it's a nice word. Well, hold on, I'm still stuck a little bit on symmetry. So why symmetry, plain old mild manner of symmetry, why is that important in the equations of physics? Because you see it or it's something that helps you solve the equations? Well, it's for the same reason that 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 running down all the same laws, except I'm just substituting Jorge some places and Daniel and 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 can say, hey, look, the same laws apply to the electron and the muon and the tau. 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 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 living in the U.S. is very symmetric to living in Switzerland in that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so it's kind of like it's symmetric in that it's sort of like the same rules apply or there's some sort of pattern between living here and living in Switzerland. Yeah, I don't know. There's much in common between living in Switzerland and living in the U.S.

I've lived in both places. They're pretty different experiences. I guess they both eat yogurt. It's not 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's these underlying things. Everybody wants the value of property and everyone who wants life and everyone wants liberty. And you could say those are inherent about being human. There's 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.

And you've learned something about humanity that way by identifying 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 universal and you want them to be applicable to many different things. and you want them to not vary on a willy-nilly basis. You want it to be kind of rock-solid. Yeah, exactly.

Symmetries allow us to write these things more compactly, right? 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-mannered, Clark Kent, glasses-wearing symmetry, is some sort of, like a perspective on the laws of physics that say that it's sort of applicable everywhere. So then, but now they're super symmetry. Are you ready to put spandex on the cemetery now?

Let's take his clothes off and see what he's wearing underneath. This is a family-friendly podcast. So he's taking his clothes up, but he's got an outfit on underneath, folks, okay? Well, let's get into supersymmetry, but first let's take a quick break. December 29th, 1975. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal.

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Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I don't write some. God write songs. I take dictation. I didn't even know you've been a pastor for over 10 years. I think culture is any space that you live in that develops you. On a recent episode of Culture Raises Us podcast, I sat down with Warren Campbell,

Grammy-winning producer, pastor, and music executive to talk about the beats, the business, and the legacy behind some of the biggest names in gospel, R&B, and hip-hop. This is like watching Michael Jackson talk about thoroughly before it happened. Was there a particular moment where you realize just how instrumental music culture, was to shaping all of our global ecosystem. I was eight years old, and the Motown 25 special came on. And all the great Motown artists, Marvin, Stevie Wonder, Temptations, Diana Ross. From Mary Mary to Jennifer Hudson, we get into the soul of the music and the purpose that drives it.

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Those who lack expertise lack the expertise they need to recognize that they lack expertise. And then as we try the whole thing out for real. Wait, what? Oh, that's the run right. I'm looking at this thing. Listen to no such thing on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so that's a pretty good breakdown of symmetry, which is it's kind of like the perspective that things should have a pattern in nature. And things should have fundamental laws that don't change just because you move from one place to the other or from one particle to the other, right?

Yeah, exactly. It's like if you notice, hey, there's sort of two different kinds of things. What can we find that relates to 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 in the context of a larger idea, right? It's like, why do we have Democrats and Republicans?

Oh, well, they're both just political parties, right? That's sort of the symmetry between them. Okay, so then now let's get into the topic of the podcast. Super symmetry. So that's like a regular symmetry, but more so. Or I guess the question is like, why aren't all symmetry super? What's special about super symmetries?

Super symmetry is called super because the folks that named it were grandiose in their ideas. It's called super because it sort of encompasses the whole set of particles. Here's the idea. The idea is that we notice

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 quarks and all that kind of stuff. Those particles have a technical name

called fermions. Then there's a different kind of particle. These are particles that describe the forces. So the ones that are responsible for electromagnetism, the photon, or the weak nuclear force, the W&Z boson, or the strong force, the gluon. 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, but 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 it matter particles and force particles.

How about that? Sure. That sounds good. Matter particles and force particles. Yep. And that's odd to people. Like, huh, that's weird that we have two different kinds. Right.

And they thought, 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 force particle had a corresponding matter particle? Wouldn't that be pretty?

Wouldn't that be a nice connection between these two, otherwise just disparate groups of particles, these just two lists that we have? 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 as particles.

We do treat them as particles, yeah. And force particles and matter particles, we treat them a little bit different in quantum field theory. 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? I dare say a super symmetry, right? Oh, I see. So like the matter particles are maybe symmetric among themselves and the force 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 the 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 force particle that corresponds

to the electron. And there's no matter particle that corresponds to the photon, for example. So if this is going to work, you have to invent a reflection particle for each one, right? So every matter particle, you 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. Oh, wait, so like if I have a matter particle, like the electron, or like a quark, you're saying that if there are supersymmetry, then that means that there's a force particle that is just like the quark or the electron, but it's a force particle. And something about a change that makes it a force 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 endoparticles.

So if there's some particle out there, you say, well, it should have an antiparticle, right? In this same way, we say, well, the electron, there should be some force particle that corresponds to it, and there should be some matter particle that corresponds to the photon. Why couldn't the photon be the supersymmetric version of the electron? Do you know what I mean? Like, why can 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 and the electron have nothing like the same mass. and then what would match up with the muon, right, and what would match up with the tau. So we want sort of all the symmetries in the matter particles to be reflected in the symmetries in the force particles. And then there's a bunch of other technical reasons why that just can't work. Okay.

Well, the important thing is that they have really silly names, right? That's the main take away from this. Exactly. So what they did was they said, 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 a particle that's the force version of the quark

and a 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 its sort of super symmetric partner. It's like hypothetical, right?

Yes, hypothetical. We haven't discovered them. Like if there's a Swiss version of Jorge, you 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, its super symmetric version,

the force version of it, is the selectron. Why is it one S and not two S's, you know, like supersymmetry? It should be like this selectron. And that's why, because we don't want to be sounding like snakes all the time in our meeting. It gets pretty silly. Like we have the top quark and its super symmetric version is the stop quark, right? Or the bottom cork and its super symmetric version is the spottom quark, right? Wow.

That sounds like an invitation for funny meetings. Exactly. 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. 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, its 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 U.S.? It would be Danielino.

Danielino, yeah, exactly. Danielino and Jorge. Siorhe. That's the super-symetric version of this podcast. That's right. Danielino and Sioux explain the C-universe. C-unerino. But can you just do that?

Can you just posit 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 observe a pattern, the next thing to do is to say, well, if this pattern holds, 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 the Higgs boson was verified.

They saw this pattern. The pattern is complete only if 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 super symmetric reflection? If so, then 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 12 matter particles and five force particles. Now I'm going to say we have 24 particles and 10 particles, right?

So it's a big prediction. Yeah, it's kind of like saying, hey, I have a theory. I think that for every person in the U.S., there's a Swiss version in Switzerland of that person. And everyone in Switzerland has a U.S. version in the U.S. And now we haven't seen any of them yet. Yeah. They're all hidden somewhere underneath cupboards. 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 there are 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,

well, 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 $10 billion to build a particle collider so I can create the energy density needed to make these particles. Which 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'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 $10 billion, we'll 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. Then the question was, is this collider big enough to find supersymmetry? Is super

symmetry sort of in the next chunk of unexplored territory that can be searched by this collider? Wow. Okay. So that's what super symmetry 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 $10 billion, I'm pretty sure I'm going to find them. That's right. And it was a fun idea and it was invented in the 70s and 80s and played with. And 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 noticed that not only it was acute mathematically, but it actually solved a different problem we have 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 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. We can calculate what mass it should have,

and the calculation is kind of complicated, but the short version of the story is that force particles make it push the mass in one direction and matter particles push in the other direction. and so and these are really big pushes right that push it 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

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 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, I 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? 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. 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 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 I'd be right, hmm, hmm, this is a clue. Thank you. 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 would solve a bunch of problems, it might even explain dark matter, right? And so it's a really, it's a tantalizing idea because it could, It could kill a lot of birds with one stone.

Kill a lot of matter and forces in one. Yeah, you could win five Nobel Prizes with one discovery. Wow. All right, let's get into whether or not this is actually real. And if you have found evidence for it, but first, let's take a quick break. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed.

There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal, glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances. Just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to. to stay. Terrorism. Law and order criminal justice system is back. In season two, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to predict and even harder to stop.

Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I don't write some. God write songs. I take dictation. I didn't even know you've been a pastor for over 10 years. I think culture is any space that you live in that develops you. On a recent episode of Culture Raises Us podcast, I sat down with Warren Campbell,

Grammy-winning producer, pastor, and music executive to talk about the beats, the business, and the legacy behind some of the biggest names in gospel, R&B, and hip-hop. This is like watching Michael Jackson talk about thoroughly before it happened. Was there a particular moment where you realize just how instrumental music culture was to shaping all of our global ecosystem. I was eight years old, and the Motown 25 special came on. And all the great Motown artists, Marvin, Stevie Wonder, Temptations, Diana Raw. From Mary Mary to Jennifer Hudson, we get into the soul of the music and the purpose that drives it.

Listen to Culture raises us on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine that you're on an airplane, and all of a sudden you hear this. Attention passengers. The pilot is having an emergency, and we need someone, anyone, to land this plane. Think you could do it? It turns out that nearly 50% of men think that they could land the plane with the help of air traffic control. And they're saying like, okay, pull this. Do this. Pull that. Turn this. It's just... I can do my eyes close. I'm Manny. I'm Noah. This is Devon.

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All right. So that's supersymmetry. We broke it down a little bit. And you said it might explain dark matter. What does that mean? Well, there's a particle, one of the supersymmetric particles is something that doesn't turn into anything else. It just sort of hangs out because it's the lightest one. It can't turn into anything else. And so if it exists, it might be the dark matter particle. Right. So it might be that dark matter is made of particles. And the particles it's made out of. be super symmetric particles. Wow. Isn't the super symmetric version of the photon? Like that would be cool.

Yeah, exactly. The opposite of light is dark matter. That's beautiful 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 this is for us, symmetry is the physicist's version of poetry. Hmm. Except it doesn't rhyme. Oh, no, it does rhyme because all the particles end with the same. He knows.

You could probably 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 real. Exactly zero. And zero is symmetric.

So in a way, you sort of confirm 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 turn out to not be true. And so we a lot of people said

we would find super symmetry and we turned on the large Hadron Collider, but we didn't. They thought you would find these crazy hypothetical particles would just start popping out of the collider. Yeah, and it's pretty exciting. When you turn on a new collider, a collider in an energy, nobody

has ever collided particles out before, you could discover something in minutes, right? It really is like landing on a 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 just like, you know, flew out of the collider like crazy. So the first few days of the Large Hadron Collider, everybody was very excited, right?

We were 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 Hedron Collider that we didn't know about before was the Higgs boson.

Huge triumph, but a lot of people sold supersymmetry as a potential discovery of the Large Hedron Collider, and so far, not there. Maybe they were just hedging in case they didn't find the Higgs. They're like, well, 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. And one question is, like, how far away is Susie? How heavy are these particles? Right. Are these particles real and part of nature, but the large Hageon collider is just not quite big enough to find them, right? Or is it that 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. Really? Really? We don't have 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 mass, 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 if the electron had a super particle that had its same mass, we would have found it already. I like how you said most beautiful. Like, you guys have beauty contest for theories? Yeah, like pageant. The simplest, most poetic theories, right? you know and some of these

series look great in the swimsuit competition male and female right they stumble when they ask them about geopolitics but you know they do their best and then the judges flip a sign saying 10 eight seven you can have versions of supersymmetry where the super symmetric particles are like

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 supersymmetry. There's always got another rock for itself to hide under. But as I was saying before, there was a controversy because people thought maybe the theory community was too bullish on whether the LHC was big enough to find super symmetry. 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, well, well, 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 a super talk? Did you give two super talks? It was super and symmetric. did you give it forward and then backwards that's right I walked on stage and then I walked off stage but no yeah

I talked a lot of physicists there physicists there and they were a lot of them were like really convinced that super symmetry was is true and I was like how do you what makes you so confident or what and it was

really sort of came down to a sense of faith or a sense of like you said like this believe that the universe has to be beautiful and it has to be symmetric in this way. Yeah, a lot of people have bought that story. Personally, me, not interested. I think it's ridiculous. I've never spent any of my professional scientific energy searching for supersymmetry,

and I have no interest in it. Really? Why not? What makes you so down in it? There's a few reasons. 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.

I prefer sort of a simpler, more compact answer. But I think more fundamentally, I'm not into particle physics to confirm theoretical ideas. My job is not to say yes or no to the ideas some folks have in their office. My interest in particle physics is to explore. My scientific fantasy is not to discover something that Professor XYZ predicted, but to discover something weird, unanticipated, something that, that makes Professor X, Y, Z go, what? That can't happen.

That's why I'm an experimentalist, because I see it 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 was 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. It was a huge mess, and it was called the particle zoo. And that must have been really fun, you know. These days... You just want to go to the zoo, Daniel.

I just like zoos. These fuzzy little particles. Actually, I'm totally anti-Zoo. I think zoos are crazy. They're locking up these beautiful animals in cages. That's the topic of a different part. So my interest in particle physics is more about looking for something unanticipated than box checking the ideas of other people. But it's a huge area, like some big fraction of particle physicists search for supersymmetry.

Right. But you're saying it, you were telling me earlier that some people, a lot of people that Earths have given up. They're like, all right, forget it. It's not real. 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 super symmetry

of the particles are too heavy for us to have found them. It seems too clujy. Yeah, exactly. And so I think a good number of people have given up on it and are thinking about other ideas. Well, I certainly hope that you guys find that the universe is beautiful and has perfect facial structure that is 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 they should give you the billion dollars and not this theories.

My checking account is open, so feel free to send me checks for billions of dollars. Yes, I totally agree. Right. What's our Venmo account, Daniel? Venmo at Daniel and Horhe.com. Yeah, exactly. Or, you know, I accept gold bullion also. You know, that's fine. Great. Do you accept Wino's and Zenos? Yeah, exactly. Only a lot of them, though. It takes a big pile.

And in a certain arrangement. All right. Thank you very much. That's super symmetry. Hope you guys learn what it is and why it's so super. And it's something that we might discover. so maybe by the time this podcast comes out, we'll have a hint to supersymmetry, or maybe it'll take another 100 years. Nobody knows.

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.com. Thanks for listening and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Just a chaotic, chaotic scene.

In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged. Terrorism. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Why are TSA rules so confusing? You got a hood of you. I'm take it all. I'm Manny. I'm Noah.

This is Devin. And we're best friends and journalists with a new podcast called No Such Thing, where we get to the bottom of questions like that. Why are you screaming? I can't expect what to do. Now, if the rule was the same, go off on me. I deserve it. You know, lock him up.

Listen to No Such Thing on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Such thing. I'm Dr. Joy Hardin-Bradford, host of the Therapy for Black Girls podcast. I know how overwhelming it can feel if flying makes you anxious. In session 418 of the Therapy for Black Girls podcast, Dr. Angela Nealbarnett and I discuss flight anxiety. What is not a norm is to allow it to prevent you from doing the things that you want to do, the things that you were meant to do.

Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHeart podcast.