The workshop, third in a series of such meetings, was expected to bring together 100 particle physicists from across the United States to discuss the science that would be made possible by a new linear collider. A representation of an electron-positron collision in the SLAC Linear Collider at Stanford University. Particle physics has been approaching what might be termed a theory vs. hardware impasse. For theoretical physicists, the so-called Standard Model has worked well explaining the fundamental structure of the universe, but it still leaves some basic features unexplained, such as why some forces are so much stronger than others. Supersymmetry, says Swartz, fits very well with what else is known about the complexities of particle physics, which means there's a host of additional particles out there, more than double what are currently known, just waiting to be seen.
Scientists think they're tantalizingly close to finding what the theorists predict.
Finding what may be lurking requires much more powerful machines. The Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois has a newly renovated circular collider called the Tevatron. And in five years, CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, will bring online the Large Hadron Collider, a circular collider that smashes protons together. But circular smashers have problems, Swartz says. To significantly speed up electrons sent whizzing through its tunnel, a circular collider must tremendously increase the amount of energy it applies.