“We all agree that there has to be something beyond the Standard Model, but we don’t know what that something is,” says Weinberg. For now, this ugly theory is the best we have.
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The math that describes nature can be simple, even elegant. Consider Einstein’s beloved $E = mc^2$. A mere three letters tell us that matter and energy are, essentially, the same. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which sets limits on what we can know about reality at small scales, fits neatly on a coffee mug.
But beauty isn’t everything. For all its ungainliness, the Standard Model just happens to be the best theory ever devised for answering a question humans have been asking for millennia: What is the universe made of?
“Particles are not very interesting,” says Weinberg. “If you’ve seen one electron, you’ve seen them all.”
Particles arise from something even more fundamental: fields. Fields are invisible and everywhere. You’ve encountered fields before, the last time you tried to push two magnets together. That uncanny pressure you felt came from magnetic fields pushing back. Fields behave like liquids and can ripple, like the surface of an ocean. When they form a wave, a particle is born.
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Some researchers have been trying (unsuccessfully) to add even more fields that could solve some of the problems of the Standard Model, an idea called super symmetry. Others believe that fields may be made of something even more fundamental - tiny vibrating strings - but testing string theory has been problematic.
“We all agree that there has to be something beyond the Standard Model, but we don’t know what that something is,” says Weinberg. For now, this ugly theory is the best we have.
This article adapted from Discover.
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