Inconstant Me

It strikes me that I've been inconsistent. And I will continue to be inconsistent. I'm not the least bit abashed; I just wanted to acknowledge my inconsistency.

I am on record as saying that I find the lamba-CDM model of cosmology convincing. I find the argument that hot dark matter would have erased fine structure in the early universe especially convincing. Fair enough. That's not terribly inconsistent.

I am also on the record as saying that WIMPs (weakly-interacting massive particles) are the most likely candidate for cold dark matter. That's not terribly inconsistent either.

But I'm on the record of being dubious of supersymmetry, and here's where I become inconsistent. WIMPs are conjectured to be unseen, weakly-interacting supersymmetric particles, but since I don't believe in supersymmetry, how can I believe in WIMPs?

One of the advantages of not knowing what I'm talking about is being able to gloss over inconsistencies like this with a shrug and a grunt of "Eh, nobody reads this anyway." But I do console myself with the observation that WIMPs need not necessarily be supersymmetric. They could be something else, though I'm not in a position to say what else. Perhaps a hitherto undiscovered fourth generation of particles. Klingons. Who knows.

Transformations in charge symmetry lead to antimatter. That is, if you take an electron and in effect rotate it around the charge axis (metaphorically speaking) you end up with a particle that is just like an electron except that it has the opposite charge and is by definition antimatter (a positron, in other words). Transformations in spin symmetry lead to supersymmetric particles. Take an electron and rotate it around the spin axis (metaphorically speaking, and always bear in mind that nothing is actually spinning) and you end up with the electron's supersymmetric partner.

Electrons, quarks and the other constituents of matter are called fermions and have half-integer spins. Force-carrying particles, like photons, gluons, W and Z mesons and theoretically gravitons have full-integer spins and are called bosons. This means that in supersymmetry, there is for every fermion a supersymmetric boson, and vice versa. And it is conjectured that somewhere in this new mess of stuff are the WIMPs that make up the extra mass required by the lambda-CDM theory. (There is even a naming convention for these particles - the supersymmetric partners for fermions have an "s" added to their names (leading to the selectron, the sneutrino and squarks) while the supersymmetric partners for bosons have "ino" added to their names (leading to the photino, the gluino and, I suppose, the Wino, Zino, and gravitino).).

I'm dubious of all this. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, but I do find it increasingly compelling that even at the astonishingly high energies we've already reached in particle accelerators, supersymmetric partners remain unseen. -+ /8 (<-- this business was not intended as math; it was my nervous little dog dancing on the computer)

So where was I? I like WIMPs, but I don't like the main theory that explains where WIMPs come from. So I guess I'm waiting for some new explanation for them. Inconsistent? Sure. But at least it's fun.