Daniel Whiteson

I hate to do this to you, but you have to explain a little bit supersymmetry, duality, that sort of thing, just to catch us up.

Sure.

And so all the numbers that make the Higgs heavier come from its interactions with one kind of particle called bosons.

And all the interactions that make the Higgs lighter come from its interactions with fermions.

So there's two kinds of particles in the universe, bosons and fermions.

We're made of fermions.

Bosons are the particles that transmit energy, like photons and the W and the Z and the gluons and all this kind of stuff.

And so those are two very different kind of particles, like photons and W's and Z's don't match up with the fermions, the electrons, muons, quarks, and this kind of stuff.

So how do you make those things match up?

How do you make it so these numbers all cancel those numbers?

Well, you just say, well, for every fermion, there's a new boson we've never seen before, and those two numbers match perfectly.

And for every boson, there's a new fermion we've never seen before, and those two numbers match perfectly.

So the ugly part is you have to double the number of particles.

If, say, every particle has some partner out there we've never seen before, and their contributions to the Higgs mass exactly cancel, or almost exactly cancel, and that's why the Higgs has a low mass, because you have the pluses and the minuses, and they balance perfectly.

That's cool, and it's exciting because it means, wow, there's so many particles to discover.

And this is like 25 years ago, people thought, okay, there must be particles out there.

It's beautiful.

Also, the theorists love this idea because it's a fun playground.

There's so many new particles to play with, and there's a beauty to it.

There's an elegance to say, oh, this is only half of the story.