I recently wrote about a request from a wise panel of experts to name the single discovery (in high energy physics) that would be the most surprising possibility in the next decade. You, our readers, gave a variety of enlightening and entertaining responses. In the end, the committee charged with writing the official response (of which I am a member) gave the only answer we could honestly give. After much debate we ended up with the following and quoted Shakespeare:
There have been many possible scenarios of new physics proposed for the TeV energy scale. If we were to base our expectations on a survey of our colleagues, we could make a rank ordering of the "a priori likelihoods." Supersymmetry would probably be the most expected discovery, followed by large extra dimensions, new strong interactions, ... But nature would probably take little note of our questionnaire or the responses! The most surprising discovery is "none of the above". Particle physics has been driven in the past by surprises, some of which have become the very foundation of our understanding. Examples are: parity is violated; CP is violated; quarks are real but never seen as free particles; most of the mass in the universe isn't due to the particles we know; most of the energy budget of the universe is in dark energy, causing the universe's expansion to accelerate. Nature has reminded us time and again that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.
It's the honest answer. We humans do not know what is out there waiting for us to discover! That's the really fun part.
