From: Terry Pilling Subject: Re: why only bosons can mediate interactions Date: 24 Jan 2000 19:54:29 -0800 Newsgroups: sci.physics.research Summary: [missing] I have found that IMHO the best paper for someone interested in an introduction to supersymmetry is the report by Martin Sohnius: Phys. Rep. 128, No. 2&3, (1985) 39-204. There is even a very nice introduction section which is ideal for someone who just wants to get the gist of it without the heavy math. I will quote from his introduction a passage that is related to the present thread, "Supersymmetric theories, and particularly supergravity theories, `unite' fermions and bosons into multiplets and lift the basic distinction between matter and interaction. The gluinos, for example, are thought of as carriers of the strong force as much as the gluons, except that as fermions they obey an exclusion principle and thus will never conspire to form a coherent, measurable potential. The distinction between forces and matter becomes phenominological: bosons - and particularly massless ones - manifest themselves as forces because they can build up coherent classical fields; fermions are seen as matter because no two identical ones can occupy the same point in space - an intuitive definition of material existence." A little thought makes one realise that supersymmetry - if true - is an extremely profound idea, it is giving an equivalence of matter and force. This seems, to me, to be as profound as Einstein's mass- energy equivalence. I have found that the more one studies supersymmetry and supersymmetric theories, the more one admires the beauty of the mathematics. It makes you _hope_ that the next generation experiments at the LHC will see supersymmetric partners. There is a quote - I forget who said it, probably Dirac, and about something else - but I think that it applies nicely to supersymmetry, and that is: "It is so beautiful that it _must_ be true". :-) -Ter