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Superstring theory

RELATED STORIES

Crucial tests for string theory
Murray Gell-Mann Scientist
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The most obvious test is to see if the supergap is relatively small and the superpartners of the non-particles appear in experiments. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they do. It's a pity that we lost the accelerator in Texas. Terrible pity. But if the one at CERN is built it will have, well, less energy and probably less intensity, but might be sufficient, depending on the supergap, to find a superpart... at least... at least one superpartner of a known particle.

[Q] Do… do you see… when… when you think of supersymmetry do you think of it as intimately connected to string theory? That is...

Well, you could argue, as some people do, that even if you found supersymmetry—broken supersymmetry to be correct--it would still not prove superstring theory. That's certainly true. You could conceivably, logically have supersymmetry without superstring theory.

New York-born physicist Murray Gell-Mann (1929-2019) was known for his creation of the eightfold way, an ordering system for subatomic particles, comparable to the periodic table. His discovery of the omega-minus particle filled a gap in the system, brought the theory wide acceptance and led to Gell-Mann's winning the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1969.

Listeners: Geoffrey West

Geoffrey West is a Staff Member, Fellow, and Program Manager for High Energy Physics at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He is also a member of The Santa Fe Institute. He is a native of England and was educated at Cambridge University (B.A. 1961). He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1966 followed by post-doctoral appointments at Cornell and Harvard Universities. He returned to Stanford as a faculty member in 1970. He left to build and lead the Theoretical High Energy Physics Group at Los Alamos. He has numerous scientific publications including the editing of three books. His primary interest has been in fundamental questions in Physics, especially those concerning the elementary particles and their interactions. His long-term fascination in general scaling phenomena grew out of his work on scaling in quantum chromodynamics and the unification of all forces of nature. In 1996 this evolved into the highly productive collaboration with James Brown and Brian Enquist on the origin of allometric scaling laws in biology and the development of realistic quantitative models that analyse the influence of size on the structural and functional design of organisms.

Tags: Texas, CERN

Duration: 1 minute, 4 seconds

Date story recorded: October 1997

Date story went live: 29 September 2010