Physical Society Colloquium

Place Your Bets, or:
The last chance to be wrong about what might be discovered at the LHC

Cliff Burgess

McMaster University & Perimeter Institute

The turn-on of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been touted as likely to fundamentally change our picture of how nature works on the smallest of distances we can probe. This talk will review the case for why failure to discover something is believed not to be an option, and outline the three main categories of new physics that have been identified as the possible contenders for the new physics to be found. To establish my personal credibility, if time permits I will explain why I personally think the LHC will discover extra dimensions and string theory, and yet will not produce a black hole that will eat the earth.