Whispers of a Successor

McKee, Maggie. "Whispers of a Successor." Scientific American n.d.: 19-20. Web.

    Physics is at a bit of a dead end right now. The regular way of describing the universe, called the "Standard Model," cannot explain dark matter. A theory in 2012 suggested that something called Supersymmetry (SUSY) existed. In layman's terms, supersymmetry says that every known particle has a partner particle that is heavier. This helps explain not only dark matter, but also the recently discovered higgs-boson, which gives other particles mass. There is just one problem with SUSY, and that is that it's a theory. Scientists needed to find evidence of supersymmetric partner particles before they can conclude anything else. Now, however, experiments in the LHC, the world's most powerful particle collider, seem to have revealed exactly that. Larger-than-expected amounts of some particles may be caused by supersymmetric particles decaying into regular ones. The scientific community is split on the existence of supersymmetry, but the author isn't passing judgement just yet.

    This discovery will not affect the average person's life, but it is a huge topic of debate among scientists.

    After reading this article, I understood the point Maggie McKee was making. It also got me very excited for the LHC to reopen in 2015 so scientists can continue their work on supersymmetry and other particle physics experiments. The article also conveyed a lot of information in only seven short paragraphs, which I liked, but also made it difficult to read. I liked reading about this theory and hope more evidence is found.

Posted for K. Taylor