Thursday, November 12, 2009

A String Theorist Wants LHC To Look For The "Stau"

The stau?

Oh well. This will be another hunt in the pursuit of finding any valid empirical evidence to show that String Theory is not a meaningless pursuit. Could String Theory produce a particle that has a lifetime of a minute?

Vafa traveled to CERN in late October to discuss with teams of scientists at the two main detectors on what else they might see. If the assumptions that he and Heckman make in the context of string theory are valid, Vafa said, the two lightest of the new particles are the gravitino and the stau. The gravitino, however, is so weakly interactive that it is hard to produce directly, Vafa said. A stau particle, however, is easier to produce and should be semi-stable, lasting as long as a minute. And it should leave a signature track — unexplainable by any of the already-observed particles — as it streaks across the LHC’s detectors.


We shall see....

Zz.

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