David Gross and supersymmetry

The latest LHC results, published yesterday, show that supersymmetry has been excluded at the LHC over a large parameter range.

A few months ago, in summer 2010, David Gross, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics for his research on the strong interaction, stated that if the LHC does not find supersymmetry, this does not disprove the idea. Technically this conclusion is correct. But it is also true of the idea that elementary particles contain little green men from Mars. Indeed, if the LHC does not see the little green men, technically, this does not disprove the idea.

So we are in a situation where a well-known theoretical physicists is not ashamed to speak about little green men – sorry, I meant to say supersymmetry – and nobody dares to say that this is a deeply ideological attitude.

Nobody? That is not true. A little village of disbelievers is left over. We will see who is right...