Dinner with Gordie Kane May 23, 2008
Posted by dorigo in personal, physics, science.Tags: kane, PPC2008, string theory, supersymmetry
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Yesterday evening the conference banquet of PPC 2008 was held at Yanni’s, a nice restaurant on Central Avenue in Albuquerque. I was lucky to sit at a table together with quite interesting company of several distinguished colleagues. Most notably, to my right sat Gordie Kane, with whom I had a interesting discussion about the expectations for Supersymmetry at the LHC and on the promises that String Theory may one day go as far as to explain really fundamental things such as why quarks have the mass we observe, why the CKM matrix elements are what they are, and why the other queue is always faster.
Gordie was really surprised by my 1000$ bet against new physics discoveries at the LHC. He was willing to take it himself, but I said I am already exposed with Distler and Watts. He is positive on the fact that LHC experiments will find Supersymmetry, and in general he has a very optimistic attitude which is infectious. I went as far as to say I would be willing to buy string theory if one showed me there are prospects for really explaining things such as those I listed above, and after a further glass of wine I invited him to offer a guest post on this blog where he could discuss the matter, or more loosely the reasons to be optimistic about new physics being just around the corner. He said he will do it, although he is now quite busy. So, expect a guest post by none less than Gordie Kane in here in the matter of a month or two…
For the time being, I can just offer the following picture, taken by Mandeep Gill on my request during the banquet:
A Quantum Diaries Survivor 