Monday's Lesson - nosseL s'yadnoM

In a comment recently, I suggested a lesson on symmetry. I can do that one better - a lesson on SUPERsymmetry!

Supersymmetry is an extension of the Standard Model of particle physics. The Standard Model encompasses all the particles that have currently been discovered: the fermions like the electron & the quarks, as well as the bosons like the photon and the W. In the supersymmetric model, each of these particles has a heavy superpartner. The superpartners of the fermions are named by putting an 's' in front of the name, such as selectron and squark. The boson superpartners are named by putting and 'ino' at the end, for example, photino and W-ino (no, not wino, silly).



According to a June 9th Economist article, these supersymmetric particles may solve a cosmological issue called the lithium problem. The problem with lithium is that the Standard Model underpredicts the abundance of ⁶Li and overpredicts the abundance of ⁷Li.

The superpartners may have catalyzed nuclear and particle reactions in the early universe (when there was enough energy density to produce these heavy particles), in such a way as to increase production of ⁶Li and increase the destruction of ⁷Li in agreement with cosmological abundances. Interesting.

Maybe the LHC at CERN will find evidence of superpartners, and we could be on our way to clearing up an enormous universe-sized lithium problem.