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At the moment, though, physicists are not doing so well in the
simplicity department. Their so-called Standard Model is a
stick-and-bubblegum contraption. It crudely splices together three
of the fundamental forces of nature (the strong and weak nuclear
forces and the electromagnetic force), leaving out the fourth
(gravity) altogether. The 36 quarks or fundamental particles it
posits come in six flavors and three colors. It needs 12 Yang-Mills
fields to govern the interaction of subatomic particles and a large
number of "Higgs" particles to explain why it all looks so distorted
to an observer. Worst of all, it needs no fewer than 19 arbitrary
constants to describe the masses of the particles and the strengths
of the various interactions. (In an elegant theory, constants can be
deduced from first principles.) Empirically it works just fine, but
it is unlovely in the extreme. It needs a makeover.

Jim Holt in "High Concept", _Slate_, July 26--28,
		   1996

Tags: arbitraryconstants fundamentalforcesofnature fundamentalparticles subatomicparticles eleganttheory electromagneticforce threecolors flavors nuclearforces firstprinciples contraption standardmodel higgs quarks forcesofnature physicists makeover simplicity gravity interaction