For decades, string theory has stood as a leading, albeit controversial, candidate for a theory of everything, weaving together the universe’s fundamental forces and particles into a single, grand mathematical framework. However, a new study suggests that data from the world’s most powerful particle collider could disprove the theoretical framework that supports string theory.
In a paper published in Physical Review Research, a team of theoretical physicists argues that the discovery of a single type of exotic particle at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) or a future collider could falsify the vast landscape of string theory models constructed to date.
“One of the challenges in connecting string theory with observation is the vast array of possible low-energy phenomena which can, in principle, emerge at long distances,” researchers write.” “Our aim in this work will be to propose a class of phenomenological signatures which—if observed—would immediately rule out all known string vacua, effectively falsifying string theory.”
The researcher’s premise is deceptively simple. If scientists were able to discover a particular kind of particle—a so-called SU(2)L with n >plet—it would challenge the entire known string landscape. That’s because, despite string theory’s notorious flexibility, it appears incapable of producing certain high-dimensional particle states on its own. Specifically, the researchers focus on particles known as Majorana fermions in real, n-dimensional representations of the SU(2)L gauge group—a key component of the Standard Model of particle physics.
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