The Science Department has landed James Gates from the University of Maryland, a big name in science. He will be speaking to our HS students on February 28th.
Sylvester James Gates, Jr. received two bachelor degrees (one in Math and a second in Physics) from the Massachusetts Institiute of Technology in 1973, and a Ph.D. in physics from MIT in 1977. His thesis was the first one written at MIT on the Topic of SUSY.* He has been featured on four PBS specials such as "Breakthrough: The Changing Face of Science in America."
He is a science celebrity in the same league of Carl Sagan and Steven Hawking. He discussion will be a great opportunity for our science students.
Thank you Science Department, for scooping up this great scientist to advance science in this community.
In particle physics, supersymmetry (often abbreviated SUSY) is a symmetry that relates elementary particles of one spin to another particle that differs by half a unit of spin and are known as superpartners. In other words, in a supersymmetric theory, for every type of boson there exists a corresponding type of fermion, and vice-versa.As of 2008 there is no direct evidence that supersymmetry is a symmetry of nature. Since superpartners of the particles of the Standard Model have not been observed, supersymmetry, if it exists, must be a broken symmetry allowing the 'sparticles' to be heavy.If supersymmetry exists close to the TeV energy scale, it allows the solution of two major puzzles in particle physics. One is the hierarchy problem - on theoretical grounds there are huge expected corrections to the particles' masses, which without fine-tuning will make them much larger than they are in nature. Another problem is the unification of the weak interactions, the strong interactions and electromagnetism. Another advantage of supersymmetry is that supersymmetric quantum field theory can sometimes be solved. Supersymmetry is also a consequence of most versions of string theory, though it can exist in nature even if string theory is wrong.The minimal supersymmetric Standard Model is one of the best studied candidates for physics beyond the Standard Model.
