There was a time when there were raging debates over whether neutrinos were only an accounting trick.

Then we figured out how to detect ones coming from astronomical objects. (Leaving the question of how to account for why we only see 1/3 of what we expect to from the Sun.) As a result, if they thought they had detected this, I would be inclined to believe that it really existed. The addition of one more practically invisible particle (which is practically invisible for understood reasons) is less of a shock than revocation of conservation of energy.

However whether or not we would accept this as yet undetected particle is irrelevant to QM. At present we have tremendous amounts of information supporting the basic concepts of QM. Even if QM turns out to be fundamentally wrong it, like Newtonian physics, is going to survive as a heck of an approximation.

Now if you argued that the idea of supersymmetry was like epicycles, I would be less inclined to disagree. It does, after all, predict a bevy of particles we haven't seen at energies we can't reach without a heck of a lot of concrete evidence. Heck, even if it is right, I happen to think that that area of physics is one of rather little interest at present. (See [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=20256|my rant] a while ago on this.)

But supersymmetry is not QM. It is an attempt to push QM ever closer to the Big Bang. Its success or failure has little impact on the larger theory of QM. Even if it fails, we will still be using QM in understanding the materials properties that allow us to keep pushing Moore's law forward...

Cheers,
Ben

I think the target is misplaced.

The basics of QM have long worked. When extended to a relativistic form with QED it worked very well (other than the renormalization problem). And the menagerie of particles that caused problems got a nice unified explanation with the Standard Model.

Physics works well all of the way down to the internals of the nucleus. QM as a framework works, and we have found that it works well across many orders of magnitude. (Quantum superpositions have been demonstrated all of the way up to macroscopic levels, including both superpositions in superconductor rings several feet across and demonstrations of the EPR effect. The latter of which may have practical consequences for the spooks.) This isn't news. It has been so for many years. Any theory that replaces QM (and they have been proposed) has to explain a lot of success.

In fact in the last hundred years we have had a series of weird predictions from QM turning into practical reality with huge consequences. Nuclear bombs. Transistors. Lasers. Holograms. Coming up are nanotechnology, quantum cryptographic channels and quantum computing. (One line of research that I wonder what happened to is the feasibility of manufacturing circuits as superimposed holograms of different materials. I wouldn't bet against it if they get the - admittedly difficult - technical details sorted out.)

That said, there are fundamental conceptual problems. Here are the biggies that I see:

1. Reconciling QM with GR.
2. Getting beyond the standard model.

Both are huge questions. Both have been open in roughly their current form for decades. Neither do we have the technology to experimentally challenge. And my opinion is that research on them has stalled out and moved from being science to a form of theology.

Cheers,
Ben