Did 'The Big Bang Theory' Get the Science Right? A Lesson in Supersymmetry and Economy Class.

Pedro_P

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In "The Citation Negation" episode, Amy and Sheldon are devastated after learning from a Russian paper that Super Asymmetry has already been discovered and disproven.
Credit: Sonja Flemming/CBS via Getty Images
▼ They say that life imitates art, but the arrow goes both ways. Far more often, art imitates  life. That's what happened in a recent episode of the hit television show " The Big  Bang Theory." In the episode — " The  Confirmation Polarization" — Sheldon and Amy receive an email from Fermilab. Two scientists had confirmed Amy and Sheldon's theory called Super Asymmetry. The researchers were studying a subatomic  particlecalled kaons and the measurement and prediction (how it should behave in theory) disagreed. They called their measurement a failure until they realized that Amy and Sheldon's paper, published only a few months prior, explained the discrepancy. The two researchers were flown (in economy plus…more on that later) to Caltech to meet Amy and Sheldon.
The Fermilab scientists are angling for a Nobel Prizeand, because no more than three people can receive the prize, they are trying to cut Amy out of the picture. They tell Sheldon if he can get the President of Caltech to nominate the three of them for the Nobel, combined with the nomination from the head of Fermilab, they'd have a strong case for receiving the honor. Sheldon decides that if Amy isn't included on the nomination, that he doesn't want to be on it either and he tells that to the President, who explains how this will result in a fight with Fermilab; he adds that he has their back. The episode ends with the situation left unresolved.
So this episode was brought to my attention because…well…Fermilab. Fermilabis a real place. I drive to it every morning in Batavia, Illinois. And it's a fantastic place to work if you are fascinated by the subatomic world, which I am, and that means I get to drive to work every day with a smile. But I thought people might be interested in learning about what was true and what wasn't in this episode.
Let me start by saying that I like "The Big Bang Theory" a lot. And the writers try not to stray too far away from real science in their episodes. In fact, David Saltzbergof UCLA is both a research collaborator of mine and a scientific consultant for the show. He makes sure that the writers don't include any scientific topic that is too outlandish and disreputable.
Some people grumble about how the show represents the scientists in a cartoonish way, and there is truth in the criticism. Sheldon is just way over the top and most scientists don't really act like that. (Although, truth be told, I do know a single person who reminds me of Sheldon. I decline to identify him on the grounds that everybody who has met him agrees with me.) Leonard is a lot more true to life, although even his character is a little more socially-clueless than reality. Scientists are mostly pretty normal people, with normal lives. They're just smart and very focused on their work. (Or, I suppose, I could be more like Leonard than I'd like to admit. I decline to ask anyone on grounds that I don't want to know the answer.)
So just how much does the episode ring true? To begin with, there is no real theory called Super Asymmetry. However, there is a theory called supersymmetry,which is a very popular extension of the standard model of  particle physics— our best current theory of subatomic matter. While there has been no experimental confirmation of supersymmetry — which proposes that every particle identified in the standard model has a supersymmetric partner — it is well enough regarded that there exist over 10,000 scientific papers on the topic. So, except for the poetic license on the name change, we'll give them that one.
How about the experiment? (▪ ▪ ▪)

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dushazmi

All theories are just imagination, agreed by large numbers of scientists.