LHC puts supersymmetry in doubt

[NotAllThere]

The theory of Magic has never been disproved to my knowledge.

There are more ways of disposing of a theory than disproving it. Lack of falsifiability, for example.

[d000hg]

Multiverse theories seem kind of an easy out in a way to me.

[OwlHoot]

I'm as pleased as punch so far, because I have a $500 bet with physicist Lubos Motl that the Higgs particle won't be found by the end of 2012 (in effect at all, if experiments at the LHC go to schedule).

Supersymmetry seems rather more likely to be manifested somehow (maybe not exactly in a stark Boson-Fermion duality), and there are plenty of models where it becomes evident only at higher energies than typical current expectations.

[Fred Bloggs]

Multiverse theories seem kind of an easy out in a way to me.

To my simple mind though, seeing as universes seem to have always existed, in that there never was a time without universes, it seems to me that an endless series of universe creation>destruction>creation is a fairly obvious theory to propose. it is then a pretty short leap to conclude there must be many, even infinite number of them in existence. We'll never know.

[TimberWolf]

It seems to me that whether a particle has [rest] mass or not is a matter of definition. Photons are massless, but put them in a box and you can weigh them.

[sasguru]

. Forever reliance on the unproven is used to further deepen our ideas.

FFS Learn English. You sound like an idiot savant without the savant bit.

[d000hg]

To my simple mind though, seeing as universes seem to have always existed, in that there never was a time without universes, it seems to me that an endless series of universe creation>destruction>creation is a fairly obvious theory to propose. it is then a pretty short leap to conclude there must be many, even infinite number of them in existence. We'll never know.

"In existence" seems a tricky definition. If there is nothing 'outside' our universe because it is everything, how do multiple universes 'exist'? Since even time is a function of our universe we can't say there was another universe before ours. Parallel worlds maybe, but aren't the scientific multiverse theories a bit less vague than that, in that they DO posit some kind of relationship between universes as a way to explain how ours works? Just proposing a whole bunch of other universes on its own doesn't actually answer anything!

FFS Learn English. You sound like an idiot savant without the savant bit.

This is a thread for serious thought Sas. You wouldn't enjoy it.

[Cliphead]

"In existence" seems a tricky definition. If there is nothing 'outside' our universe because it is everything, how do multiple universes 'exist'? Since even time is a function of our universe we can't say there was another universe before ours. Parallel worlds maybe, but aren't the scientific multiverse theories a bit less vague than that, in that they DO posit some kind of relationship between universes as a way to explain how ours works? Just proposing a whole bunch of other universes on its own doesn't actually answer anything!

This is a thread for serious thought Sas. You wouldn't enjoy it.

Tantalising glimpse that may be evidence of parallel universes.

[d000hg]

We've had all kinds of crazy theories in even serious publications for decades... that one reads like someone's pet theory which will be forgotten as fast as it came. To me anyway... when they prove it correct I'll happily eat my humble pie as well as my hat.

[OwlHoot]

Parallel worlds maybe, but aren't the scientific multiverse theories a bit less vague than that, in that they DO posit some kind of relationship between universes as a way to explain how ours works? ..

No, that's the problem. Conventional parallel universe interpretations posit no influence of one on any others, which means the theory is impossible to test directly.

I reckon the opposite is true, but each universe evolves to completion in the other in the shortest possible time (in fact defines a Planck time unit), where "completion" here means either expand to infinity or collapse.

So we, and everything we experience, in other words all fields and particles, are nothing _but_ parallel universes constantly being created and destroyed, with each "split" representing a choice at the most fundamental level (individual energy quanta) between two possibilities. Of course these universes are late stage ones, comprising nothing but vacuum, as ours will one day in something like 10^500 years once all the black holes have evaporated.

Note that in theory if you fell into a large rotating black hole then as you approach the inner horizon, the outside universe you had left behind would appear to evolve ever faster until it evolved to completion in a tremendous blue flash. So that illustrates in a crude way that universes can manifest themselves enormously speeded up in others!

One can sort of see how this might conserve energy in normal circs, but at the same time allow for mysterious effects that apparently don't, such as dark energy or the Big Bang.

It also seems vaguely plausible that limiting splitting to an unambiguous situation, where there are only two possibilities, might ultimately be what allows energy to collect in and preserve the resonant states we call particles (and determine their relative masses etc).

But without being able to whump up some formal model consistent with conventional QM and GR, it's just a lot of vague musing and physicists would (rightly) not give the idea the time of day.

Here's a parting thought. We don't all live in the same universe anyway. There's a large overlap to be sure, but technically we, and in fact each atom, are each in very slightly different universes, with different cosmic horizons for a start

BTW, multiverse theories make a distinction between "universe" in lower case which, loosely speaking, is simply a causally connected chunk of the "Universe" (uppercase) AKA multiverse, which is the whole shebang.