I’m live blogging to you from the SUSY06 conference, hosted this year at UC Irvine. It’s held in a rather nice hotel in Newport Beach. It’s actually a resort of some sort, it seems, although I shall not have time to look around and enjoy it.
It is great to go to these conferences to hear about the growing buzz of excitement about what might happen in the upcoming major experiment in the field, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC, see here and here), about which you’ve read a lot from previous posts (do a search on “LHC”). There’s a feeling that there’s a chance for there to be wonderful physics “just around the corner”, and that’s a good place to be in terms of morale. The SUSY conferences have a very nice mix of theory, experiment and phenomenology -and crucially the practitioners thereof- and this makes them worthwhile attending. I was lucky last year to be on my annual visit to Durham when SUSY05 was going on, and I’m lucky again this year for SUSY06 since Irvine is just “down the road” from Los Angeles.
(For the record… I tried to take the train, rather than driving, but could find no information at all from the conference site about how to get from the Irvine train station ten miles away to the actual site. After a long time on various websites I found that it would take me an hour and a half to cover than ten miles by bus….the same time it would take me driving from home during the rush hour. Now, I’m willing to bet that it is possible to do it…..but the fact that the hotel makes no effort at all to supply you with any information about this is frustrating. It just does not occur to anyone that somebody might want to try to use public transport. So I ended up driving. Sigh.)
Recall that the LHC collides protons together after accelerating them around a ring that is 27km around.
We hope to see all sorts of exciting physics in the products of those collisions, which will hopefully answer questions about the origin of mass and the details of Electroweak Symmetry breaking. What is that latter thing? Basically, we’ll learn -we hope- about the manner in which the force of electromagnetism on the one hand and the weak nuclear force, on the other, broke apart from each other and became the distinct forces we see today at low energy. At high energy -the energies those collisions probe- the forces change their character and merge into one force, the Electroweak force. The “symmetry” which unites those two forces gets broken (i.e., they’re no longer united) in a way that the LHC will study, by (roughly) reconstructing the high energy conditions they were under when they were united. In the breaking of this symmetry, the particles which interact using these forces (the stuff that makes us up) all get masses by interacting with some kind of particle we have not yet discovered. In its simplest form, it is called the “Higgs” particle, and it is this particle (or particles, if there is a family of them) that we hope to study with the LHC. This is the LHC’s most important task.
So what’s been going on so far? Well, lots of excited chatter about the LHC. It is a truly amazing machine, as an engineering feat as much as a scientific tool. We heard a lot about this from Lyn Evans’s talk, which opened the conference. (Well, I missed that talk with the help of Yahoo’s confusing driving directions). The LHC is due to switch on in the late Summer of next year, running below design specs for a trial run. After a short period they will turn it off. Think of this as checking that all the bits are working properly before you go all out. Same way you would if you’d just installed a new sprinkler system in your garden. Then in 2008 they’ll switch on for real and work their way gradually up to where they want to be in terms of energy (in each collision of the particles) and luminosity (a measure of roughly how many collisions per second, and how close to “head on” those collision are).
Now people are hoping for a lot more from the LHC. There is the hope that there might well be signs of more physics than just the standard scenarios involving the Higgs mechanism. There are several good reasons to hope that the LHC might see hints of something more. Hints that there is a family of Higgs particles of the right sort, with the right couplings, might indicate that we are beginning to see Supersymmetry, a candidate symmetry of Nature that combines what we think of as “matter” particles (electrons, quarks, etc), and “force” particles (photons, gluons, etc) into a larger structure where they are on the same footing. This would be tremendously exciting for several purely particle physics reasons (SUSY -short for Supersymmetry- makes certain discrepancies between energy scales in the problem less mysterious – see here), and would be very encouraging for those who work in string theory as well, since Supersymmetry seems to be extremely natural in that context.
If Supersymmetry shows up, (we’d need a new experiment -such as the ILC- designed to study the problem once the LHC has shown the way, to be sure about it), we may well have the beginnings of the answers to the Dark Matter problem too, since the unknown form of matter needed in that context may well be a particle required by supersymmetry.
And then there are possible surprises….. large extra dimensions, black holes, new hidden gauge groups…. things we have not even thought of. So this is why it’s a great time to be visiting this kind of conference. We’re getting ourselves ready for what may come. The talks by Stephen Mrenna, Dieter Zeppenfeld, and Mihoko Nojiri this morning gave us a good flavour of what people are expecting, and preparing for, in the run up to the LHC. There will be several more talks of this type. You can see the full schedule of this very well organised conference here. In addition to the morning sessions where we all sit together, there are lots of parallel sessions on more specialized topics in collider physics, cosmology, string theory, alternative scenarios, and other aspects of phenomenology. Combining that with the chance to meet and talk to lots of other physicists and hear what they’re working on, there’s a lot of good stuff going on.
I wonder if there’ll be any singing and dancing, as happened last year? I do hope we get called Bawdy Strumpets again!
-cvj
[Update: A commenter, chimpanzee, decided to supply visuals of scenes from the conference in lots of pictures and video clips (and even an iTunes podcast channel.) The links are here:
http://susy06.textamerica.com (stills)
http://susy06.blogspot.com (video)
and at iTunes Music Store as the "SUSY '06″ video-podcast.
Please note that those blogs, and the material contained within, are nothing whatsoever to do with Cosmic Variance. I link them only as a courtesy.]
June 12th, 2006 at 6:59 pm
The LHC is proton-on-proton, not proton-on-antiproton.
June 12th, 2006 at 7:00 pm
Thank you!! I was just in the middle of correcting that error!
-cvj
June 12th, 2006 at 7:35 pm
‘There’s a feeling that there’s a chance for there to be wonderful physics “just around the corner”‘
Hopefully LHC will have fewer corners than Iraq.
June 12th, 2006 at 7:46 pm
Let’s hope to see the Higgs(es?)…
And good to see that you’re back, Clifford!
Cheers, Kasper
June 12th, 2006 at 8:47 pm
I’m curious if anyone considers a scenario with LHC experiments discovering one light Higgs and nothing else…
June 12th, 2006 at 8:58 pm
I’m curious if anyone considers a scenario with LHC experiments discovering one light Higgs and nothing else…
It seems improbable that that scenario has occurred to anyone
June 12th, 2006 at 9:09 pm
A less smart-alecky answer. Yes, but that’s pretty much a worst case scenario for particle physics. Surely even that should provide some additional cues though.
June 12th, 2006 at 9:20 pm
There was a Vloggercon ‘06 video-blogging conference up north in San Francisco. It’s the 2nd year, but there is a LOT of excitement about the Concept of Citizen Journalist. “Self Journalism”
CVJ’s live blog-entry, essentially demonstrates that Scientists NO LONGER need to depend on Journalists from the Mainstream Media to cover their conferences..they can do it THEMSELVES. Recall Melissa Franklin’s lecture “Why the NY Times doesn’t get the right spin on our data”. Well, now you can completely BYPASS the media, & do your own science-journalism.
I did a “satellite Vloggercon demo blog” from LA, just to demonstrate the power of near-LIVE blogging. I did some LIVE blogging, which covered the Web-delivery of streaming-video from Vloggercon ‘06. You can see my video-intensive setup in my office.
[Rest of comment was, sadly, too long and too off-topic and so was sent back to commenter. -cvj]
June 12th, 2006 at 11:14 pm
[...] On the way home from the conference a short while ago I listened to a fantastic interview with Sharon Weinberger on NPR’s Fresh Air. I recommend it. She has recently written a book about this subject, and Terry Gross takes her into refreshingly unblinking (for US primetime radio) detail about some of the science, the “Imaginary Weapons” (title of her book) and the current and past politics of the issue. The super hand grenade, for example, is an attempt to make an explosive from an isomer of Hafnium (the nucleus is in an excited state), Hf-178. There was a rumoured successful experiment which supposedly managed to get some Hf-178 to release its energy after being irradiated with X-rays from a dental X-ray machine. Various groups have tried to reproduce this experiment, and various panels of scientists have spoken of the unfeasibility of this avenue of investigation as a viable weapons program…. but still the research gets support, the goal being a so called “isomeric bomb”. [...]
June 13th, 2006 at 12:41 am
The Landscape “avant la lettre” by A.N. Schellekens
I sometimes wish it was really easy for a lay person like me to get at the “heart” of these arguments and find the “basis of thought” which preceded all the outcomes which were experimentally challeged from the postions adopted?
Then it becomes something more then “science” seemingly, only mathematically endowed?
June 13th, 2006 at 7:34 am
It seems improbable that that scenario has occurred to anyone
No way!
Obviously, what I meant is what this “doomsday scenario” means for ILC. With all US HEP projects pretty much canned in favor of the ILC, it would be a pretty dull experiment in this situation, wouldn’t it? So it looks like we are playing poker not only with the goverment, but also with Nature…
June 13th, 2006 at 10:43 am
Welcome back!
June 13th, 2006 at 10:45 pm
Valuing Negativity
Ben Goldacre’s most recent Bad Science section of The Guardian has a thought-provoking discussion of the relative ease of publication and degree of press coverage devoted to positive results in science, as opposed to negative results.
I expect …
June 13th, 2006 at 10:47 pm
[...] If this had been the end of the story, then bosons and fermions (and therefore force carriers and matter) would be destined to forever remain distinct. But here comes the loophole. The 1975 Haag-Lopuszanski-Sohnius theorem (after Rudolf Haag, Jan Lopuszanski, and Martin Sohnius) pointed out that if one relaxes one of the assumptions, and allows anticommuting operators as generators of the symmetry group, then there is a possible non-trivial unification of internal and space-time symmetries. Such a symmetry is called supersymmetry and, as you know, constitutes a large part of current research into particle physics. [...]
June 13th, 2006 at 11:58 pm
I’m posting from the Marriott/Rose Garden, where the Reception was held. I got permission by Dr. Feng/UCI/chair to try New Mediums for the SUSY ‘06 conference. Thanks to CVJ for this post, which stimulated me to try some LiveWebCasting (”mobile blogging”, aka “moblogging”):
http://susy06.textamerica.com
& video-blogging (& video-podcasting):
http://susy06.blogspot.com
[...And later..... -cvj]
I have a video-clip of the Reception up at the SUSY ‘06 video-blog. It’s also available over the “SUSY ‘06″ video-podcast at iTunes Music Store. Just subscribe to it, plug in your video-iPod, download the clips. Carry it around, & show to friends or public.
[The rest of these long comments have been sent back to the author. Perhaps they can be found later on the blogs linked. -cvj]
June 14th, 2006 at 2:56 pm
[...] The SUSY 06 conference is taking place this week, hosted by UC Irvine, with talks at the Marriott Hotel in Newport Beach. Here’s the program, which now has links to slides for some of the talks in the parallel sessions, although not at the moment for those in the plenary sessions. This evening there will be a plenary session on Naturalness, with talks by experimentalist Burton Richter, theorists Frank Wilczek, Leonard Susskind and Andrei Linde. This line-up is very heavily weighted toward the anthropic point of view, I wonder why the organizers couldn’t find anyone from the other side. Various bloggers are at the conference reporting, including Clifford Johnson and Sabine Hossenfelder. B. Yen, who normally covers off-road motor-racing, has decided to cover something even more exciting, academics at a SUSY conference, and is providing stills, video, and podcasts via iTunes from the conference site. [...]
June 14th, 2006 at 9:32 pm
I’m posting from Mariott outside the NC Ballroom, where there will be a Plenary session called “Naturalness”. The panel members will be Susskind, Richter, Wilczek, Linde. It will be from 7:30 to 10:00, so in that 2.5 hrs I will try to get a video-clip uploaded (not just a dinky cellphone video)..here & also over iTunes Music Store video-podcast
Andrei Linde just whisked by, saying something about “computers & needing a Mac”..which my Powerbook is.
I had the opportunity to talk some physics with Dr. Susskind (who related an interesting comment Lubos made about him..I can’t repeat it here), & a woman theoretical-physicist (post-doc @UCSB), formerly @U of Arizona. She reads this blog. I wasn’t aware of the various “camps” within this field, it reminds me of my field during my PhD research. Lots of politics, & I heard other people say the same. I told him what my ex-classmate (hid Dad was a Caltech Math PhD, “Group Theory” early 60’s), told me:
“I stay away from groups!”
It’s the territorial-nature of sub-groups within any population. I’m reminded of S. Weinberg’s statement: “The Universe is a consquence of symmetric groups”..something like that.
June 15th, 2006 at 6:01 pm
I’m blogging from SUSY ‘06, aftetrnoon-session break. Lots of people eating/drinking, in discussion groups. I plan to attend “Alternatives” (NC 1/2)..where Joanne will be chairing the 4-6pm session.
I interviewed Raman Sundrum (Johns Hopkins), who was very cooperative & generous with his time. Previosly, Angela Olinto (Chicago) also was the same. See here for their interviews. A. Olinto is quite a Brazilia n soccer fan (made references to the World Cup in her talk)..pretty dis-satisfied with Brazil’s performance so far! I was reminded of Joanne’s fandom with the St. Louis Cardinals.
Very interesting experience so far. Dr. Feng asked me to fill in for filming this evening’s session (nobody was hired..$$ issues). I plan to have it available to the Physics community over the video-iPod medium/
Any other requests, fire away..I’m here until Sat
June 15th, 2006 at 7:47 pm
I’m Blogging from SUSY ‘06, afternoon-session “Alternatives”, where Joanne is Chair..she’s sitting 15 ft away from me, to my left. She is listening very attentively to all the lectures & knows by name of the people asking questions during Q&A.
See here for some near-LIVE pics & videos of the lecturers. One of the 2 female lecturers I accidentally met 3-times already..Sabine Hossenfelder (postdoc @UCSB). She’s the only woman here at the conference who wears a dress (everyone else is in pants or pantsuits).
[snip... before it gets any worse... and incidentally that last sentence is incorrect -cvj]
June 15th, 2006 at 8:20 pm
[...] Just a quick note to point out the growing volume of video and stills of the SUSY06 conference that is being produced at an incredible rate by the Cosmic Variance commenter (pic right, taken when he was unawares) who calls himself “chimpanzee”. He has a handheld device that launches video and stills to the web seconds after recording it. All very splendid, if you like that sort of thing. [...]
June 15th, 2006 at 8:37 pm
I noticed that included in the SUSY06 scientific program is a section called WIMP theory and detection. Most of the talks in this section have to do with dark matter direct detection experiments, one example being the CDMS. Based on other things I’ve read on the subject, it seems like many people in the dark matter direct detection community are optimistic that a WIMP signal will begin to emerge by or even prior to 2010 or so. I think they are basing this optimism on the fact that the direct searches are just now reaching a part of the parameter space called the SUSY focus region. This would mean that a major breakthrough in our understanding of the material make up of the Universe is right around the corner.
Do you all share this optimism? or do you think the dark matter problem will remain irresolvable for the foreseeable future?
June 15th, 2006 at 8:47 pm
I think that people are most turned on by the exciting possibility that we might see something at LHC which consitutes a WIMP candidate…. and a SUSY sector seems to be everyone’s most hoped culprit. As the direct WIMP searches come to that “window” too, it is not unreasonable to allow oneself a bit of an excited squeal that we might being to see the very same SUSY sectors in direct detection experiments, and at roughly the same time. It would be marvellous. It could all be wishful thinking though…. but it is a nice thought, and beleived by most to be a very real possibility. I myself am allowing quite a bit of optimism that we will indeed have a huge breakthrough in our understanding of the universe in this way….. within five years.
Others may have other thoughts…. would be nice to hear them.
-cvj
June 17th, 2006 at 3:19 pm
[ I'm blogging from NC room/Marriott, SUSY '06 just finished ]
I put up a new video-clip from Wed/evening plenary-session “Naturalness”, here. It’s available on “SUSY ‘06″ video-podcast on iTunes Music Store (do a search on “susy06″, “supersymmetry”). Subscribe to it, connect your video-iPod & listen to it at your leisure (or show it to colleagues).
It’s the start of the panel-discussion.
“It’s [ Antrhopic Principle ] an OBSERVATION, not an explanation!”
was BR’s point. I have to side with him. In Control Theory (Elec Eng),, there is the concept of 1) Observability 2) Controllability.
B. Richter is quite a good speaker, & I related to his technical points (emphasis on “Observation”). Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the tape with his & A. Linde’s talk..I hope I didn’t lose it. I wasted hrs this morning trying to find it. That’s why the above clip is a little late. It was uploaded during this morning’s plenary-session, while I was LiveWebCasting.
Thanks CVJ for the post, without it..I wouldn’t have “Thrown Technology at the Problem” at SUSY ‘06. Dr. Feng was really gracious & supportive (got me a lunch on Fri, since I was running short on time because of the extensive workload). I think SUSY ‘06 might have the distinction of “leading the way” as far as using the new “mobile media solutions”. I met Bob Stein (USC Media Ctr?) way back in ‘93, at the AFI (American Film Institute) in Hollywood. He’s the founder of the well-known Voyager CD company. Maybe USC has the right leadership to use these New Mediums.