What if every particle of matter has a hidden twin?

Science · Published 24 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: The universe appears to favor matter over the forces that govern it, but physicists suspect this imbalance is an illusion. A theoretical framework called supersymmetry suggests that every known particle has a hidden twin, potentially revealing that matter and force-carriers are merely different facets of a single underlying entity.

In the Standard Model of physics, particles are divided into two distinct families: fermions (which make up matter, like quarks and leptons) and bosons (which carry forces, like electromagnetism). The primary difference between them is 'spin'—an intrinsic property where fermions have half-integer values and bosons have integer values. Currently, the universe appears to favor fermions, but this imbalance feels arbitrary to many scientists.

Supersymmetry (SUSY) proposes a radical symmetry where these two families are actually connected. The theory proposes that for every boson, a corresponding fermion exists within a supersymmetric framework, and this relationship remains reciprocal. For example, quarks and leptons would have 's' counterparts (like squarks), while bosons would have 'ino' counterparts (like photinos).

While we have no experimental confirmation of SUSY yet, the theory is highly desirable because it solves three major mysteries. First, it addresses the 'hierarchy problem' by explaining why the Higgs boson has such a low mass. Second, it provides a mechanism to unify three of the fundamental forces: the strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces. Third, it offers a perfect candidate for dark matter. Because we haven't seen these 'superpartners' at the Large Hadron Collider, scientists estimate they must be very massive—perhaps 1000 times the mass of a proton or more.

The theory also links internal properties to the geometry of the universe. When a fermion is transformed into a boson and back again, the particle effectively moves in space, relating internal spin to space-time transformations. This makes supersymmetry an essential feature of supergravity and string theory, both of which aim to provide a 'theory of everything' by unifying all particles and forces into a single, self-consistent framework.

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