The rumored upcoming announcement of the discovery of the Higgs boson on July 4 would put in place the last major thread of the Standard Model of physics. This might sound like the case is closed on how the universe works, but though the Standard Model answers many questions and has been very effective at predicting the existence of particles that were subsequently discovered, it also spawns a whole new set of questions that could prove very tough to conquer.
Knowing the mass of the Higgs would be a spectacular achievement, said theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss of Arizona State University, whose book about the intricacies of particle physics, Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing, came out in January. “But if that’s all they discover it could be bad for everyone because it doesn’t tell you how to solve the problems of the Standard Model.”
That’s where supersymmetry comes in.
via Wired
Image: A simulated supersymmetry event from the Large Hadron Collider’s ATLAS experiment. ATLAS/CERN
