Says skeptical mathematician Peter Woit, after hearing Talks at the KITP (Not EvenWrong, August 12, 2011). The multiverse that makes all nonsense true just ain’t out there.
While it’s true that SUSY was in trouble pre-LHC, there’s psychologically a big difference between indirect effects not showing up, and directly looking for something and finding it’s just not there. The discussion with the audience is quite interesting, with some audience members a lot more worried about SUSY. One of them reminded people that SUSY is supposed to solve naturality problems, so relatively light squarks were expected, but now “those models are being screwed.” Someone else (Lisa Randall, I think) reacted to Reece’s mentioning R-parity violating models as one way to evade the LHC limits with “Is there any good reason to think about R-parity violation?” All in all, the discussion gives a good indication of what prominent theorists are thinking now that the initial results from the LHC are in.
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