From: Walter Watts (wlwatts@home.com)
Date: Sun Jan 27 2002 - 21:19:25 MST
BEFORE TRANSLATION:
“If one constrains simple models of low-energy supersymmetry with
current data, one finds that most available parameter space lies in a
meta-stable vacuum of the scalar potential. The global minimum is charge
and color breaking, but the tunneling rate tends to be negligible; the
lifetime of the meta-stable state being greater than the age of the
observable universe.”
AFTER TRANSLATION:
MAKING HARD SCIENCE A LITTLE LESS HARD
HEY WHO SWITCHED OFF THE UNIVERSE?
JUST IN CASE YOU DIDN’T HAVE enough to worry about, think about this: A
random fluctuation of the vacuum of space anywhere in the universe could
flip the cosmic light switch to “off,” plunging the whole of creation
into darkness. Light and the electric force holding atoms together would
disappear. All matter would disintegrate into lumpy disorder, and what
was left of Earth would collapse under its own gravity.
According to physicist Benjamin Allenach of the European Center for
Nuclear Research (CERN), this scenario comes from the theory of particle
physics called supersymmetry. The theory proposes a set of sister
particles— “super-partners"——for each of the known particles in the
Standard Model of particle physics.
“Supersymmetry is really a beautiful mathematical symmetry between
particles and forces,” says Allenach. Beautiful, that is, unless it
turns ugly. At some point in the history of the universe, supersymmetry
got broken. As a result, the super-partner particles are all heavier
than their known particle counterparts. And that could shake up the
universe a bit.
In the Standard Model, the universe’s vacuum isn’t empty or quiet. It’s
fizzing with spontaneously appearing and disappearing particles,
permeated by an energy field named for physicist Peter Higgs. The Higgs
field particles fill the vacuum like a jelly, dragging at the particles
that pass through it. If the jelly slows a particle down, it gets mass,
and that’s where the trouble begins.
A spontaneous “quantum flip” —that is, the random spontaneous appearance
of a pair of super-partner particles in the vacuum— could introduce
heavier Higgs super-partner particles, thickening the jelly. Photons
passing through the thicker field would feel the drag, and these
normally massless energy particles would gain mass. There would no
longer be enough energy to produce photons, and light and other
electromagnetic energy would disappear. The new, lower-energy state
would spread to every corner of the universe. So now what? Should you
lie awake at night, trembling with apocalyptic worry? Allenach does not
think so. The odds, he says, are less than one in 169 billion. You’re
more likely to win the lottery two weeks in a row. So go ahead and turn
out the light—Paul Beck
THE PAPER “Quark Disasters.” Delivered at the British Association for
the Advancement of Science Annual Festival, Glasgow. Scotland, September
2001
THE AUTHOR BenjaminAllenach, European Center for Nuclear Research
(CERN]
THE GIST Think quarks, leptons, and bosons are too small to harm you?
Think again. Someday, they and their sister particles could unmake your
whole cosmos.
BEFORE
TRANSLATION
“If one constrains simple models of low-energy supersymmetry with
current data, one finds that most available parameter space lies in a
meta-stable vacuum of the scalar potential. The global minimum is charge
and color breaking, but the tunneling rate tends to be negligible; the
lifetime of the meta-stable state being greater than the age of the
observable universe.”
-- Walter Watts Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc. "To err is human. To really screw things up requires a bare-naked command line and a wildcard operator."
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