At the heart of our understanding of reality is physics, the cornerstone of science. But it appears to be in all sorts of trouble. For decades it has been predicted that we would find 'supersymmetry' - a set of parallel particles for all those we currently understand to exist. It was the solution to many inconsistencies and deep puzzles in our current theory. 10,000 scientists collaborated to build The Large Hadron Collider to find the evidence. But year has followed year and no evidence of the predicted supersymmetric particles has been found.
Is supersymmetry dead, and with it string theory, the theory of everything, and the life's work of many leading particle physicists? Is our underlying theory, the Standard Model, fundamentally mistaken? Must we conclude that the whole framework of contemporary physics might be wrong? And if so, where can we turn for an alternative?