The 95% CL upper limits on the gluino (left ) and squark (right ) pair production cross sections as a function of neutralino versus gluino (squark) mass. This is a figure from the ‘Search for supersymmetry in events with photons and missing transverse energy in pp collisions at 13 TeV’ by the CMS Collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider. Image credit: CERN / CMS Collaboration.

Five Brilliant Ideas For New Physics That Need To Die, Already

If your favorite theory made the list, you might want to consider a new favorite to bet on.

“Some people believe holding on and hanging in there are signs of great strength. However, there are times when it takes much more strength to know when to let go and then do it.” -Ann Landers

Plenty of people complain that science is too monolithic, that it’s a victim of “groupthink” and that people who come up with new ideas are routinely labeled as crackpots. But as much as novel ideas and theories are valued, creativity does not always equate to correct. The history of physics, in particular, is littered with ideas that were brilliant, creative, out-of-the-box, and completely wrong. From alternatives to relativity like “tired-light” to the “Steady-State” alternative to the Big Bang, to even the “Sakata model” alternative to the Standard Model, alternative ideas are important for comparing the actual Universe to our predictions and expectations.

The expanding Universe, full of galaxies and the complex structure we observe today, arose from a smaller, hotter, denser, more uniform state. Alternatives to the Big Bang, like the Steady-State theory, fell out of favor due to the overwhelming observational evidence, but the Steady-State adherents never changed their mind, not until the day they died. Image credit: C. Faucher-Giguère, A. Lidz, and L. Hernquist, Science 319, 5859 (47).

But when the data comes in, it’s important to let those invalid ideas go. Hanging on to them only slows down the progress of…