23 January 2013 - Standard Model

There are two ways to solve a jigsaw puzzle: You can start the detail work of fitting pieces together, or you can sort the pieces out into a big picture and then worry about finer arrangements. In most areas of human endeavor, like say biology or typography, we start with the sorting; we know we have the big picture roughly correct because the result works, but many details are unknown (biology) or nonsensical (typography). It’s only the details that are hard, but the details are all wrong anyway so who cares? But in the Standard Model of physics the pieces fit so perfectly that whenever a new decimal is measured it comes out right, and yet the picture on the puzzle can’t be reconciled. What is a physicist to do but fruitlessly look more and more closely for the pieces which don’t fit?