Failures of the
Standard Model
Masses
"A missing part of the Standard Model is an explanation of
why the particles have the masses that we observe [¹² page
472]." The model is incapable of predicting masses of
the particles.
One example of a lot of head-scratching
is that the current model it is based on massless neutrinos,
whereas measurements have revealed a significant deficit -
"the intensity of electron neutrinos from the sun is only
about 1/3 of the expected value, the total intensity of all
neutrinos (including muon and tau neutrinos) reaching us
from the Sun agrees with the predicted value" which is very
puzzling [¹² page 473]. Neutrino oscillation
explains how this could happen by neutrinos oscillating
between electron, muon, and tau neutrinos which is only
possible if neutrinos have mass. This means that the
Standard Model must be modified to include nonzero neutrino
masses because the current model's rules for conservation of
lepton number do not allow one type of neutrino to transform
into another [¹² page 473].
The discovery of the Higgs Boson was a
beautiful example of pure mathematics initiating and
foreshadowing a great scientific discovery. The Higgs
field, which gives mass to elementary particles, is a
background sea of virtual Higgs bosons popping in and out of
existence [¹]. Quarks, leptons, and the W and Z bosons
have mass because they interact with this field [¹].
Photons and gluons don't interact with the Higgs field;
therefore, they have no mass [¹]. The Higgs field is a
scalar field (all it does is give mass - a scalar quantity -
to particles) and is unique in that it has no spin [¹].
Despite this recent and fascinating
discovery, the Standard Model still fails to offer an
explanation for the seemingly random distribution of
masses of the fundamental particles.