A cura di @houellebecq.

Sabine Hossenfelder nel suo blog ci spiega come potrebbe essere un problema per la fisica delle particelle non aver scoperto nessuna nuova fondamentale particella – fatta eccezione per il bosone di Higgs – con gli esperimenti del LHC.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) recently completed its second experimental run. It now undergoes a scheduled upgrade to somewhat higher energies, at which more data will be collected. Besides the Higgs-boson, the LHC has not found any new elementary particle.

It is possible that in the data yet to come some new particle eventually shows up. But particle physicists are nervous. It’s not looking good – besides a few anomalies that are not statistically significant, there is no evidence for anything out of the normal. And if the LHC finds nothing new, there is no reason to think the next larger collider will. In which case, why build one?

That the LHC finds the Higgs and nothing else was dubbed the “nightmare scenario” for a reason. For 30 years, particle physicists have told us that the LHC should find something besides that, something exciting: a particle for dark matter, additional dimensions of space, or maybe a new type of symmetry. Something that would prove that the standard model is not all there is. But this didn’t happen.

Immagine da Flickr.