Frank Wilczek pays up on bet over finding superparticles at the LHC
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.0210040
New Scientist : In 2009, Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek made a $1000 bet with theoretical physicist Garrett Lisi that CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) would detect a supersymmetric particle by July 2015. Lisi had made headlines in 2007 as the “surfer physicist” because of his interest in extreme sports. Because of delays with the collider, the physicists extended the bet by one year. On 17 August Wilczek conceded the bet. So far, the LHC has discovered only the Higgs particle, which was predicted by the standard model. However, the standard model is incomplete, and one of the most widely accepted alternative theories is supersymmetry, in which standard-model particles have heavier partners. Several variations of supersymmetry have been mostly ruled out by the lack of new LHC discoveries.