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"Sparticle" is a merging of the words supersymmetric and particle. Supersymmetry, one of the cutting-edge theories in current high-energy physics, predicts the existence of these "shadow" particles. According to the theory, when the more familiar leptons, photons, and quarks were produced in the Big Bang, each one was accompanied by a matching sparticle: sleptons, photinos and squarks. This state of affairs occurred at a time when the universe was undergoing rapid phase change, and theorists believe this state of affairs lasted only some ten trillionth of a ten trillionth of a nanosecond (10-35 seconds) before the particles we see now "condensed" out and froze into space-time. Sparticles have not existed naturally since that time.
However, if this theory is correct, it should be possible to recreate these particles in high-energy particle accelerators. Doing so will not be an easy task; these particles may have masses up to a thousand times greater than their corresponding "real" particles. Until recently, colliders did not have the power to create these supermassive particles, but the newly built Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland and France will be able to achieve collisions in the 14 TeV (tera-electron-volt) range, which is more than adequate to determine if these superpartner particles exist.
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- This page was last modified on 21 December 2008, at 13:06.
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