Standard Model

The Standard Model of particle physics is a theory concerning the electromagnetic, weak, and strong interactions, as well as classifying all the elementary particles known.

Quotes

 * If the Standard Model describes the world successfully, how can there be physics beyond it, such as supersymmetry? There are two reasons. First, the Standard Model does not explain aspects of the study of the large-scale universe, cosmology. For example, the Standard Model cannot explain why the universe is made of matter and not antimatter, nor can it explain what constitutes the dark matter of the universe. Supersymmetry suggests explanations for both of these mysteries. Second, the boundaries of physics have been changing. Now scientists ask not only how the world works (which the Standard Model answers) but why it works that way (which the Standard Model cannot answer). Einstein asked "why" earlier in the twentieth century, but only in the past decade or so have the "why" questions become normal scientific research in particle physics rather than philosophical afterthoughts.


 * As for the Standard Model, we now know that the roles of asymptotic freedom, monopoles, and instantons are crucial in our present picture of quark confinement, the hadron spectrum, the scaling phenomena, and jet physics. The renormalized theory allows us to reproduce the observed data on the Z and W bosons with unprecedented precision. The Standard Model, as a gauge theory with fermions and at most only one scalar, is indeed tremendously successful.


 * It is a characteristic of successful theories that they provide further understanding in many different areas of the field, in elegant and unsuspected ways. As for the Standard Model, we now know the the roles of asymptotic freedom, monopoles and instantons are crucial in our present picture of quark confinement, the hadron spectrum, the scaling phenomena and jet physics. The renormalization theory allows us to reproduce the observed data on the Z and W bosons with unprecedented precision. The Standard Model, as a gauge theory with fermions and at most only one scalar, is indeed tremendously successful.
 * Gerardus 't Hooft, in: (quote from p. 49); 1st edition 1996


 * A theoretical foundation for the Standard Model has been established through the work of Yang, Mills, 't Hooft, Veltman, Faddeev, Popov, Fradkin, Tyutin, Feynman, Gell-Mann, Bryce DeWitt, Mandelstam, Slavnov, Taylor, Zinn-Justin, B. Lee, Gross, Wilczek, Politzer, Becchi, Rouet, Stora, Nambu, Goldstone, Higgs, Brout, Englert, Bouchiat, Iliopoulos, Meyer, and many, many others.


 * In the 1960s and 1970s Newton's anticipation became justified. A theory was developed, the so-called Standard Model, of strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces that describe all the forces that have ever been observed acting within atoms, molecules, or atomic nuclei. It's a theory that's quite successful in comparison with observation. Nevertheless, we have glimpses of a hidden world beneath this level of the Standard Model of things going on at very much smaller scales of distance than the size of an atomic nucleus.
 * (quote at 5:07 of 42:09)


 * The Standard Model is so complex it would be hard to put it on a T-shirt — though not impossible; you'd just have to write kind of small.