Why are there only two types of electric charge?

[Zedertie Dessen]

TL;DR Summary

I've started to wonder about this the more I watch popular science videos about the Standard Model of particles physics and about matter and antimatter.

Why are there only two types of electric charge? I'm asking as a total layman in science.

I've started to wonder about this the more I watch popular science videos about the Standard Model of particles physics and about matter and antimatter. In particular, the various types of subatomic particles and the relative strengths of the fundamental forces. And also because one of the "forces," gravitation, has only one type, so to speak - attractive.

Do any practicing physicists think there is any way there could be more than just "positive charge" and "negative charge," or any way to construct a hypothetical standard model with more than two types of charge, or what the implications would be for n types of charge, etc.?

These are just my idle speculations but perhaps someone with actual training has given serious thought to them.

Thanks for any help!

 

[Orodruin]

This is fundamentally about how electromagnetic interactions are described mathematically, which results in electric charge being a number and numbers can be negative or positive (or zero). Other interactions, such as weak or strong interactions, have a different structure that is more involved mathematically and indeed you have, to some simplification, six color charges in strong interactions (three colors - red, blue, green - that can be carried by quarks, and three anti-colors that can be carried by anti-quarks).

 

[Vanadium 50]

To add to what Orodruin wrote, in general charges are described by matrices. Electromagnetism happens to be a 1x1 matrix, i.e. a number.

 

[kent davidge]

Electromagnetism happens to be a 1x1 matrix, i.e. a number.

but one can have a nxm negative matrix, a matrix whose entries are all negative numbers?

 

[Vanadium 50]

Why not?

 

[Nik_2213]

"Why are there only two types of electric charge? "

Fair question. I'm still trying to grasp quarks' 1/3 & 2/3 charges...

 

[Vanadium 50]

Again, why not? Would it be easier to understand if electrons had 3 units of elementary charge?

 

[Gaussian97]

The reason why some forces can be attractive and repulsive while others only attractive is due to the field that you use to describe the force. A force described by a scalar particle (spin 0) or tensorial particle (spin 2) are always attractive, like gravity (that's why we think that, if the graviton exists must have spin 2). If the force is described by a field of spin 1 (like the photon, W Z bosons and gluons) then the force can be attractive and repulsive depending on the charges.