There are 3 generations of quarks and leptons, apparently only one is needed to create the universe as we see it. All these top/bottom/charm/strange/muon/tau thingies seem to be there… for no reason related to intelligent life.
Well, it might be a consequence of something, but I don’t know of any such math that says that if there is one generation of particles, then there ought to be 3 (or more?).
Do you really mean that you’re convinced that it’s completely unnecessary, or just not convinced that it is necessary?
There is a rather large gap between a consistent model that verifiably results in a habitable universe, and an argument that there might be such a model. So far we have the latter, and I don’t see any argument for the former in either my previous experience with such research or at your Wikipedia link.
While baryogenesis is definitely not well understood in our universe, there seem to be good arguments that it requires the weak force or at least something like it. Production and distribution of heavy elements (and even many light elements!) also seems to require weak interactions since both s-process and r-process are based on them. It is unclear whether neutron-poor heavy nuclei would be stable even in the absence of weak decay. And so on.
In my evaluation, there are still too many unanswered questions to be reasonably convinced that the weak force is unnecessary.
This is all probably irrelevant anyway. We may well be in the position similar of arguing whether magnetism is “really” necessary from the point of view of a 19th century physicist, when it obviously and simply follows from the existence of electric fields and relativity in the more advanced 20th century theory. It seems to me that a relativistic theory that somehow onlyhas electric fields and not magnetic ones would be much more complex.
It seems quite likely that weak force follows most simply from some underlying theory that we don’t have yet.
ETA: Based on the link in the top comment, the hypothetical ‘weakless universe’ is constructed by varying the ‘electroweak breaking scale’ parameter, not by eliminating the weak force on a fundamental level.
I’m sorry, I should have put a /s in my post. I was joking around. I don’t have nearly the physics knowledge to actually have a strong opinion on the subject.
There are 3 generations of quarks and leptons, apparently only one is needed to create the universe as we see it. All these top/bottom/charm/strange/muon/tau thingies seem to be there… for no reason related to intelligent life.
I was under the impression those other particles might be a consequence of a deeper mathematical structure?
Such that asking for a universe without the ‘unnecessary’ particles would be kind of like asking for one without ‘unnecessary’ chemical elements?
Well, it might be a consequence of something, but I don’t know of any such math that says that if there is one generation of particles, then there ought to be 3 (or more?).
I’m still convinced that the weak force is completely unnecessary.
Do you really mean that you’re convinced that it’s completely unnecessary, or just not convinced that it is necessary?
There is a rather large gap between a consistent model that verifiably results in a habitable universe, and an argument that there might be such a model. So far we have the latter, and I don’t see any argument for the former in either my previous experience with such research or at your Wikipedia link.
While baryogenesis is definitely not well understood in our universe, there seem to be good arguments that it requires the weak force or at least something like it. Production and distribution of heavy elements (and even many light elements!) also seems to require weak interactions since both s-process and r-process are based on them. It is unclear whether neutron-poor heavy nuclei would be stable even in the absence of weak decay. And so on.
In my evaluation, there are still too many unanswered questions to be reasonably convinced that the weak force is unnecessary.
This is all probably irrelevant anyway. We may well be in the position similar of arguing whether magnetism is “really” necessary from the point of view of a 19th century physicist, when it obviously and simply follows from the existence of electric fields and relativity in the more advanced 20th century theory. It seems to me that a relativistic theory that somehow only has electric fields and not magnetic ones would be much more complex.
It seems quite likely that weak force follows most simply from some underlying theory that we don’t have yet.
In fact I think we already have this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroweak_interaction (Disclaimer: I don’t grok this at all, just going by the summary)
ETA: Based on the link in the top comment, the hypothetical ‘weakless universe’ is constructed by varying the ‘electroweak breaking scale’ parameter, not by eliminating the weak force on a fundamental level.
I’m sorry, I should have put a /s in my post. I was joking around. I don’t have nearly the physics knowledge to actually have a strong opinion on the subject.
The link explains how the weak interaction is essential for star formation, we kind of need that.