Do you know about Pauli’s Other Principle? One statement of it is:
Fermions are discovered in the US, whereas bosons are discovered in Europe.
(In case you don’t know, it is useful to classify particles according to whether they come with integer (0, 1,2,…) multiples of a basic unit of spin, or half-integer (1/2, 3/2,…) multiples. Fermions include the electron and the quarks, bosons include the photon and the gluons…)
Jester at Resonaances examines the striking evidence for the Principle in modern particle physics, and examines some of the predictions that follow from it. It was clear from the principle, for example, that the SSC (Superconducting Super-Collider) in Texas had to have had its construction abandoned at some point (as it was in 1993), leaving the Higgs boson to be (presumably) discovered by the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) in Switzerland when it switches on soon.
Excellent stuff. Check out the details here.
Jester seems to suggest that supersymmetry may be ruled out by the principle since it predicts fermionic superpartners of the gauge bosons…. but I was under the impression (but I could be mis-remembering) that there are scenarios where we’d see at least some of the Higgs boson structure (a doublet, in such scenarios) first – at LHC – and maybe not probe properly the physics of the fermionic superpartners until a later experiment. So presumably that is the ILC (International Linear Collider) and it will therefore be built in the US. Do I get the Prize if I get this right?
-cvj
Joke if you must.
Pauli’s World Clock
In fact, the principles of symmetry were to become the driving force within Pauli’s intellectual life. Symmetry, for Pauli, was the archetype. It was the underlying ground out of which scientific descriptions of nature arise. Divine Contenders: Wolfgang Pauli and the Symmetry of the World F. David Peat
Philosophically appealing too “only the string theorists?”:)
I see “liminocentric orientated people.”:) If it applies to the “ghost in things,” then maybe it should be applied to the in<btangible as well?:) Hmmm……
Frustrated, he left the field and had a successful career working hands-on with classical spherical orange particles of essentially arbitrary spin.
-cvj
Jordanions were conceived in Europe, but were still-Born. Only later were they re-incarnated as Fermions (hep-th/0303241). So they were discovered in Europe, and subsequently observed elsewhere. Poorly done by, Jordan never quite got the credit he was due.