aa r X i v : . [ phy s i c s . g e n - ph ] M a r Observation of a New Type of “Super”-Symmetry
S.E. Kuhn ∗ Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia 23529 (Dated: April 1, 2015)We report the discovery of an unexpected symmetry that correlates the spin of all elementary particles(integer versus half-integer) with the geographic location of their initial discovery. We find that thiscorrelation is apparently perfect ( R = 1 ), with an a priori probability of P = 1 / corresponding toa roughly . σ deviation from a random distribution. PACS numbers:Keywords: Spin, Particle Physics, History of Physics, Discovery
I. INTRODUCTION
The Standard Model of particle physics has been devel-oped in the 60’s and 70’s of the last century, and has sincewithstood numerous experimental tests to very high preci-sion. It describes all (so far) observed matter as being com-posed by 12 fundamental fermions with spin 1/2 (in unitsof ~ ) that interact through their coupling to a set of 5 typesof fundamental bosons with spin 0 or 1. All of these parti-cles have by now been experimentally confirmed, sometimesbefore and sometimes significantly after being predicted byor incorporated into the Standard Model.It is well known that the Standard Model is not a com-plete description of nature, for several reasons we will notdiscuss here. A prominent proposed extension of that modelentails a new symmetry of nature, called Supersymmetry,that couples rotations in space-time with rotations in anabstract space of bosonic versus fermionic degrees of free-dom. Among other consequences, Supersymmetry predictsthe doubling of the aforementioned building blocks of theStandard Model, with a fermionic partner for each bosonand a bosonic partner for each fermion. At the time ofthis writing, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN is readyto continue its search for such super partners at the highestavailable energies. However, no confirmed discovery of anyof these additional particles has been reported up to date.In this paper, we report the discovery of a different type of“Supersymmetry” which applies to the already known Stan-dard Model constituents: We observe a perfect correlationbetween the spin (integer or half-integer) of a fundamentalparticle and the location where it was first discovered. Inparticular, we find that every single boson (the gauge bosonsof the electroweak and strong interactions as well as theHiggs boson) was discovered within the geographic spaceof continental central Europe, while every fermion was dis-covered in the Anglo-Saxon hemisphere, encompassing theUnited States and the United Kingdom. In the following,we describe our research method and discuss each Stan-dard Model elemenatry particle in turn. We conclude witha discussion of the implications of our findings. ∗ Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
II. METHOD
While modern Physics today is a truly international en-terprise, it is fair to say that the historical origin of the sci-entific revolution underlying it can be traced to the so-calledwestern world of Europe and Great Britain. Roughly duringthe same time, these countries began colonizing other con-tinents, including the Americas. In particular, the Britishcolonies (and later independent United States) in North-ern America can be regarded as the technologically mostadvanced descendent of this scientific revolution outside ofEurope.Given this history, it seems natural to separate the coun-tries with the most advanced research programs in funda-mental Physics, even up to the present day, into two rela-tively compact geographical areas: On the one hand, thecentral European continent (designated “EC” from hereon), and on the other hand, the British Isles and the UnitedStates (“BU”). We note that there is a clear border thatcan be drawn between this two geographic domains, con-sisting of the Atlantic Ocean, the British Channel and theNorth Sea, with EC to the East and BU to the West. Forthe purpose of our study, we set out to find any significantdifferences between these two domains, as it relates to thediscovery of fundamental particles.In particular, we locate the first discovery or completedescription of a new particle (that is now part of the Stan-dard Model) geographically, either by the location of thediscovery itself or by the residence of the principal scien-tists involved. Some care must be taken to properly definewhat we count as a discovery. In the case of a particle thatwas discovered after being predicted or at least conjecturedwithin the framework of the Standard Model, we simply lookat the location of the experiment which first announced itsdiscovery (or which, later on, was considered as the cru-cial step towards acceptance that the particle in questionhad indeed been observed). However, a few particles wereof course discovered before they were predicted - in whichcase we use the first unambiguous observation, includingexclusion of all alternative explanations, of their existence,whether indirectly or directly. We believe that our methodis free of any arbitrariness and therefore our astounding re-sults are not based on any a priori observer bias. We notethat, in the following, we do not distinguish between parti-cles and anti-particles, so that the first observation of eitheris counted as the discovery of a specific particle type. It isof note, though, that even the first anti-particle to be dis-covered, the positron, was a fermion discovered by “BU”physicist C. Anderson.
III. DATAA. Bosons
The Standard model explains fundamental particle inter-actions in terms of the exchange of the following elementarygauge bosons: photons ( γ ), W + , W − and Z bosons forthe electro-weak interaction, and gluons for the strong in-teraction. In addition, the Higgs boson is required to explainthe generation of mass within the Standard Model. We donot consider the graviton, since it has not been discoveredyet and cannot be said to be a proper part of the StandardModel in its present form. All five of these bosons havebeen discovered in the EC region. Photon:
The quantization of the electromagnetic radi-ation was first conjectured by Max Planck, in his attemptto explain the black-body radiation spectrum. The photonhypothesis was concretized by Albert Einstein, who receivedthe Nobel price based on this work. His work was based onexperiments by Heinrich Hertz and others who studied theeffect of electromagnetic radiation of different wave lengthson the emission of electrons from various metals (photo-electric effect). Needless to say, all of these scientists residedin central Europe when they did this work, mostly in Ger-many and adjacent countries. W + , W − and Z bosons: All three gauge bosons ofthe weak interaction where discovered in 1983 by the UA1and UA2 collaborations at the proton-antiproton collider atCERN (headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland). Even thefirst indirect evidence for the existence of the Z boson, thediscovery of neutral currents, occured at CERN in 1973,with the Gargamelle bubble chamber Gluon:
In 1976, M. Gaillard, G. Ross and J. Ellis sug-gested searching for the gluon via 3-jet events due to gluonbremsstrahlung in e + e − collisions. Following this sugges-tion, the gluon was discovered in 1979 by TASSO and otherexperiments using the PETRA collider at DESY (Hamburg,Germany). Higgs Boson:
The Higgs boson was famously discov-ered at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, and thediscovery announced July 4, 2012. While not all of its prop-erties have been conclusively tested yet, there is little doubtthat the discovered boson is at least a close proxy for theStandard Model Higgs.
B. Fermions
Within the standard model, there is room for 6 leptonsand 6 quarks, all spin-1/2 fermions. All of these have been discovered, as well, and all within either Great Britain orthe United States (BU region).
Electron:
The discovery of the electron is usually cred-ited to J.J. Thompson and his experiments with cathode raytubes in 1897 in Great Britain. Further details about thenature of the electron were unraveled in the 1910 oil dropexperiments by American physicist R.A. Millikan.
Muon:
The muon was discovered as a constituent ofcosmic-ray particle showers in 1936 by the American physi-cists C.D. Anderson and S. Neddermeyer, and, around thesame time, by J.C. Street and E. C. Stevenson (HarvardUniv.).
Tauon:
The tau lepton was discovered in 1974–1977 byM. Perl and collaborators at the SPEAR electron-positroncollider at SLAC, Stanford (California).
Electron neutrino:
C.L. Cowan and F. Reines discoveredthe electron (anti-)neutrino in 1956, using the flux fromseveral nuclear reactors in the U.S..
Muon neutrino:
The muon neutrino was unambiguouslyidentified as a separate neutrino species by L. Lederman, M.Schwartz and J. Steinberger in 1962, using the AlternatingGradient Synchrotron at the Brookhaven National Labora-tory (New York).
Tau neutrino:
The existence of the tau neutrino wasalready implied by the discovery of the tauon (see above).Its discovery was announced in July 2000 by the DONUTcollaboration working at Fermilab in Batavia (Illinois).
Up and down quarks:
While quarks never appear as sep-arate entities outside of hadrons like protons and neutrons,the first confirmation that such point-like elementary con-stituents of the proton exist came with the Deep InelasticScattering (DIS) experiments at the then-new Stanford Lin-ear Accelerator Center (SLAC, California) in the late 1960’s,led by J. Friedman, H. Kendall, and R. Taylor. Since theirexperiment was mostly sensitive to up and down quarks inthe proton, it is credited with the discovery of those specifictwo quark types.
Strange quarks:
The discovery of this quark species isperhaps the most difficult to pin down to a singular event orplace. The first particles containing strange quarks, Kaons,were discovered in cosmic ray experiments, including thoseby G. D. Rochester and C.C. Butler of the University ofManchester (UK) and later ones using cloud chambers ontop of Mount Wilson near CalTech (California). The correctinterpretation of these particles as bound states of strangequarks was first given with the development of the quarkmodel by M. Gell-Mann and S. Zweig (both U.S. Ameri-can physicists), which was in turn confirmed by the sameexperiments at SLAC described above.
Charmed quarks:
The first particle containing charmedquarks (and identified as such), the
J/ψ , was discoverednearly simultaneously on both coasts of the North Amer-ican continent, at SLAC (using the SPEAR ring) and atBrookhaven National Lab. Both discoveries were announcedon November 11, 1974.
Bottom and top quarks:
The last two remaining (andheaviest) quark species were both discovered at Fermilab(Illinois), 18 years apart. The bound state of a bottom andanti-bottom quark, the upsilon, was first observed in 1977using a proton beam and a fixed target. The top quarkdiscovery required the full energy of the Fermilab Tevatronand occurred in 1995, after a long international race in bothgeographic regions (EC and BU).
IV. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION