🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <6AUG199219142422@zeus.tamu.edu>, dwr2560@zeus.tamu.edu (RING, DAVID WAYNE) writes...
>sichase@csa2.lbl.gov writes...
>>in any but the weakest possible sense.  Most importantly, it presupposes
>>that unification occurs at a single point - an entirely ad hoc assumption.
> 
>Could you be more specific? If you mean the coupling constants coming
>together, theoretically they should, and experimentally they do.

I don't agree on either point.  "Theoretically they should" is questionable.
You certainly can construct unification schemes where two of the coupling 
constants come together at one mass scale and the combined pair comes
together with the third at another, can't you?  As far as I understand it,
there is no strong reason to expect otherwise.  As far as "experimentally
they do,"  it seems to me that this is the big open question.  The coupling
constants run towards some kind of meeting and minimal SUSY does a 
better job of getting them to meet at one pont than at least one simple 
GUT (probably SU(5) was the one in the plot that got all the press).
But I don't see how that is m9uch evidence for SUSY.

>>Grand Unification is in a weak enough position already, regardless of 
>>the form, from an experimental point of view to trust any conclusions
>>based upon it.  But to require additional specific conditions is too much
>>for me.    
> 
>Do you mean the experimental result that sin^2(theta) is the predicted
>value, or the result that proton decay is suppressed, as predicted? ;-)

I will take your smily at face value and not bring up any of the so far
completely embarassing experimental history of GUTs w.r.t. experimental
verification.  Not that we have anything better.  Sigh...


--------------------
Scott I. Chase			"The question seems to be of such a character
SICHASE@CSA2.LBL.GOV		that if I should come to life after my death
				and some mathematician were to tell me that it
				had been definitely settled, I think I would
				immediately drop dead again."      - Vandiver