The Trouble with Physics

Smolin, 2006

The story of supersymmetry is one in which, from the beginning, the game has been to hide the consequences of the unification. This.. explain[s] why, even after more than three decades of intensive development, there are still no unambiguous testable predictions... [Its inventors may have invented] a theoretical toy that has nothing to do with nature. So far, there is no evidence either way. In the last thirty years, the first thing done with every new elementary-particle accelerator that has come on line has been to look for the particles that supersymmetry predicts. None has been found... we wait again for the next experiment.

Today that means keeping an eye on the Large Hadron Collider.. the idea with the most at stake is supersymmetry. If the LHC sees supersymmetry [we saw none], there will certainly be Nobel Prizes for its inventors. If not, there will be dunce caps...

My own guess, for what it’s worth, is that (at least in the form so far studied) supersymmetry will not explain the observations at the LHC... But even if supersymmetry were detected [it wasn't], it would not in itself be a solution to any of the five big problems I listed in chapter 1. The constants of the standard model would not be explained, because the MSSM has many more free constants. The possible choices for a quantum theory of gravity would not be narrowed, because the leading theories are all consistent with the world’s being supersymmetric.