While in the process of fact-checking information that is contained in the book I am finalizing, I had the pleasure to have a short discussion with Gordon Kane during the weekend. A Victor Weisskopf distinguished professor at the University of Michigan as well as a director emeritus of the Michigan Center for Theoretical Physics, Gordon is one of the fathers of Supersymmetry, and has devoted the last three decades to its study.
The LHC results have not brought any signal of supersymmetric particles yet, but Gordon has apparently not lost his optimism, as he believes that Nature is indeed supersymmetric, and that sooner or later this will be proven by our experimental investigations. Actually, more sooner than later: I can in fact report here a quote of his from our conversation:
Now that we can predict the gluino mass from compactified M theory we know that superpartners should not have been expected in LHC Run 1 because the gluino mass is about 1.5 TeV, and it will appear in Run 2 once the luminosity gets over 15-20 fb-1.
This is in line with his recent article, and is both exciting and impressive - I know few other theorists who are ready to offer precise predictions which can be quickly tested and proven or disproven. Gordon is saying that next year we will find the gluino (the superpartner of the strong interaction carrier, the gluon) in LHC data, and he is also saying that the absence of a SUSY signal in the data collected until now is a prediction of M theory.
I must say that as much as I do not believe M theory and Supersymmetry are the way Nature works, I would be absolutely delighted if we did find a gluino next year. And Gordon would certainly be among those deserving a nobel prize in that case.
