What are the most important phenomena that the Standard Model can't explain?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion centers around identifying significant phenomena that the Standard Model of particle physics fails to explain adequately or is incompatible with. Participants explore the potential for new physics emerging from unexplained experimental results and the limitations of the Standard Model in addressing certain aspects of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) and hadronic physics.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Technical explanation
  • Debate/contested

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants question where new physics might be found, given that the Standard Model explains most experimental results but not all.
  • One participant notes a lack of clear experimental results that deviate significantly from the Standard Model, suggesting this complicates the search for new physics.
  • A participant categorizes unexplained phenomena into seven subsets, focusing on QCD phenomena that the Standard Model might not fully explain.
  • Concerns are raised about the challenges in understanding hadronic physics, particularly regarding the behavior of composite particles and the limitations of current experimental methods.
  • There is mention of the difficulty in calculating parton distribution functions (PDFs) from first principles, with recent advancements still falling short of ideal conditions.
  • Participants discuss the imprecision in QCD calculations, highlighting the disparity between the precision of measured quantities and the theoretical predictions derived from the Standard Model.
  • One participant elaborates on the complexities involved in QCD calculations, including the issues with convergence in perturbative methods and the implications for measuring fundamental constants.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express a range of views, with some acknowledging the limitations of the Standard Model while others emphasize the lack of clear experimental deviations. The discussion remains unresolved regarding the specific unexplained phenomena and the potential for new physics.

Contextual Notes

Participants note that the challenges in QCD calculations stem not only from measurement precision but also from the inherent complexities of the theory, including the non-convergence of certain mathematical series used in perturbative calculations.

  • #31
ohwilleke said:
Research motivated by dark matter and dark energy phenomena observations and constraints
That was one of my main instincts. But it seems like in recent decades it hasn't been the main focus, why do you think that is?
 
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  • #32
AndreasC said:
That was one of my main instincts. But it seems like in recent decades it hasn't been the main focus, why do you think that is?

There are 34,672 papers at arVix that concern dark matter and those papers are found in almost every conceivably relevant subfield. It has definitely received a lot of attention. Astronomers have more to say than physicists in many other subfields, but I would strongly disagree that it hasn't been one of the main focuses in recent decades.

Indeed, as the LHC and prior successes of the SM have dried up other opportunities to discover new physics that still seemed possible a few decades ago, it has increasingly moved to center stage.

Of course, the latest new toy for physicists as a community, the LHC, is excellent for investigating the properties of the Higgs boson, and only a marginal improvement in searching for dark matter, so this and hadronic physics and lepton universality violations and a few anomalous experimental results there (most of which haven't panned out) have also taken up some of the spotlight, and there are only so many times that the public can get interested in null results from direct dark matter detection experiments or the like, even when those investigations produce lots of new scientific papers.
 
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  • #33
ohwilleke said:
Astronomers have more to say than physicists in many other subfields, but I would strongly disagree that it hasn't been one of the main focuses in recent decades.
Yes, I worded it poorly. While there is a lot of attention paid to dark matter, the impression I get (which may be wrong) is that it isn't the main focus of physicists working on advancing the foundations of physics and going beyond the standard model. At least that is the impression I had, but I'm not basing it on anything concrete . I guess it makes sense that things have shifted after all the null results.
 
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