Elementary particles and randomness

[Orodruin]

Thank you for correcting my vocabulary (being French and not a physicist doesn't help, but is no excuse for not paying attention).
Maybe the word chance would be more appropriate.

No, it would not be. The aim of physics and other natural sciences is to describe observations and make predictions based on the models. What you are describing is simply not scientific. You simply cannot make blanket statements without a proper description to back it up.

 

[Brunolem33]

No, it would not be. The aim of physics and other natural sciences is to describe observations and make predictions based on the models. What you are describing is simply not scientific. You simply cannot make blanket statements without a proper description to back it up.

I am not making any statement.
I am not saying that there are countless kinds of particles.
I am merely saying that, if particles were created by chance, maybe more, or even much more, than those already observed were created
More generally, after the few days I have spent since I joined this forum, I am a bit surprised by how restrictive it is.
Science appears to be used as a straitjacket in order to limit the exchange of ideas.
I understand that discussions must be kept within boundaries, but if the forum repels, willingly or not, those who don't talk the talk and walk the walk, it becomes only a vast congress for physicists, out of which innovation and new ideas are unlikely to pop up.

 

[ChrisVer]

Simply put: the particles we have might seem to fit in the scheme to you, but it's the other way around. As discussed a particle which doesn't interact at all will never be put in the particle content because it cannot affect what you're observing. Some particles were predicted by theory, but that's because the model we had at hand was the 'best' so far (or it survived because of it).
I don't get the randomness thing... If I close you in a room and give you 1000 m&m you can start shooting them inside the room but they will be randomly around you... or the same with the dice- what you bring is random but the final outcomes are fixed by the type of the die. If Nature has 40particles in total (if that makes sense), the final results would have been 40.

 

[Brunolem33]

U

Simply put: the particles we have might seem to fit in the scheme to you, but it's the other way around. As discussed a particle which doesn't interact at all will never be put in the particle content because it cannot affect what you're observing. Some particles were predicted by theory, but that's because the model we had at hand was the 'best' so far (or it survived because of it).
I don't get the randomness thing... If I close you in a room and give you 1000 m&m you can start shooting them inside the room but they will be randomly around you... or the same with the dice- what you bring is random but the final outcomes are fixed by the type of the die. If Nature has 40particles in total (if that makes sense), the final results would have been 40.[/QUOT
Refering to your m n' m exemple, let's imagine that there is a vast expanse of very hot melted chocolate which is cooling.
While cooling the chocolate forms little blobs of different shapes and sizes.
What are the odds that, at the end of the cooling process, all the chocolate blobs (= particles) created can be used to make an Easter egg (= universe)?
Isn't it more likely that a great number of these blobs will remain on the side, useless for the Easter egg, as leftovers from the creation process?

 

[Orodruin]

I am merely saying that, if particles were created by chance, maybe more, or even much more, than those already observed were created

I think you need to understand what "elementary" in "elementary particle" means. It means that it is the smallest type of building block available in our models and there is most likely not an infinite set of different types of those.

More generally, after the few days I have spent since I joined this forum, I am a bit surprised by how restrictive it is.

It may appear restrictive to you because we are actually being scientific and we are not open to personal speculation. Many personal theories are easily shot down simply by the fact that they contradict observations already made. People at this forum do not have the time nor the will to spend their time here shooting down personal theories and Physics Forums is not intended for that reason. It is intended for the teaching and discussion of mainstream science as it is currently understood. There are several channels through which actual science is being done and communicated and it is not the aim of Physics Forums to be one of those.
Many of the restrictions you will encounter are simply based on this. Physics, and science is general, is very restrictive because it is an empirical science which has to describe experiments properly.

There is also one thing which is strictly worse than being wrong in science, and it is being right regardless of the experimental outcome. A theory which would be fine regardless of what observations you make is not falsifiable and therefore a bad theory. Saying that everything is random and happens by chance is essentially such a statement.

Science appears to be used as a straitjacket in order to limit the exchange of ideas.

There are several ways that professional scientists exchange ideas. Physics Forums is not and does not strive to be one of those. And as I also just said, ideas which are simply wrong or vacuous are naturally disregarded. Statements which cannot be falsified are not the domain of science, but pure philosophy.

I understand that discussions must be kept within boundaries, but if the forum repels, willingly or not, those who don't talk the talk and walk the walk, it becomes only a vast congress for physicians, out of which innovation and new ideas are unlikely to pop up.

Good, that is how it is supposed to be. Physics Forum is not intended for the development of science.

Also, a physician is a medical doctor.

 

[ChrisVer]

U

The thing is then that you say that the particle content should be randomly chosen (why would that make any sense?). However I am saying that you had a fixed number of particles: the ones we know and Dark Matter, and those were produced at some point... Now the total number of different particles is unknown I guess, and it depends on the model you choose as a higher energy than the standard model theory. For example in SUSY you have at least double particle types... for an SU(2)xSU(2) breaking to the SM one you have additional gauge bosons: Wprimes and Zprime etc...

 

[mfb]

@Brunolem33: You got the time ordering wrong. Those particles are not created by a plasma, the are making up the plasma.
In the molten lego analogy: all that molten lego is made out of protons, neutrons and electrons. Cooling it can give various pieces of different shape, but those pieces are all not elementary particles.

In more physical terms, our universe is described as spacetime with various fields in it. The electromagnetic field is one, but there is also an "electron/positron field", a "muon/antimuon field" and so on. One field for one particle type (ignoring some technical details here). The number of fields is fixed, we live in a universe with a specific set of those. We found some of them. We probably did not find all (because dark matter is still a mystery and a few other questions are still open), but there is no indication that we would have missed millions of them.