According to Professor Jordan Nash of Imperial College London, who is working on one of the LHC's experiments, researchers could have seen some evidence of supersymmetry by now.
"The fact that we haven't seen any evidence of it tells us that either our understanding of it is incomplete, or it's a little different to what we thought - or maybe it doesn't exist at all," he said.
The timing of the announcement could not be worse for advocates of supersymmetry, who begin their annual international meeting at Fermilab, near Chicago, this weekend.
Professor George Smoot Nobel Laureate
Dr Joseph Lykken of Fermilab, who is among the conference organisers, says he and others working in the field are "disappointed" by the results - or rather, the lack of them.
"There's a certain amount of worry that's creeping into our discussions," he told BBC News.
The worry is that the basic idea of supersymmetry might be wrong.
