Particle Masses

"Life is strong and fragile. It's a paradox... It's both things, like quantum physics: It's a particle and a wave at the same time. It all exists all together."  Joan Jett

Particle Masses

The so-called standard model of particle physics, the most fundamental theory which is tested and which we know is true (within the energies tested so far) contains 18 free parameters, and even more if neutrinos are not strictly massless. 

These parameters cannot be calculated or predicted theoretically. One can look at them as 18 adjustment knobs we can twiddle to best adapt the theory to all known data. The problem is that this is just too many. The famous mathematician John von Neumann once said: “With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five, I can make him wiggle his trunk.” The absolute majority of the eighteen are related to the different values for the masses of the elementary particles. 

From a theoretical point of view, then, the particle masses are a total mystery - they might as well have been random numbers drawn from a hat. The repetition of particles, with increasing masses, has also remained a mystery ever since the electron’s “fatter cousin” the muon (over 200 times heavier) was discovered in the 1930s. 

Matter particles in the standard model can be arranged in generations or families. The first generation - which contains the electron, the electron-neutrino, the up-quark and the down-quark are followed by two additional copies which appear identical in everything except their masses. 

Ourselves and everything we know of, both on earth and in the cosmos, consist only of particles from the first generation. What are the heavier ones for? 

thank you as always :)