A Discussion of the Manifestation of Beauty in Physics

Liam Foster
Senior Project Advisor: Steve Smith
Animas High School Senior Humanities
(Dated: May 22, 2018)
Physics was humanity’s first foray into the sciences and the study of the cosmos in an objective,
reductionist manner. Throughout the progression of physics, cycles of beauty and chaos present
themselves. Before a paradigm shift, physical understanding complicates itself to explain unexpected
results before breaking into a deeper level of understanding. These breakthroughs often unify
seemingly disjointed subfields and lead to a more elegant model of physics. Narratives of physics
history show this cycle of beauty and complexity manifesting itself from the beginning of physics to
quantum field theory. While there is no reason the universe must operate in a beautiful way, most
physicists hope that it can be modeled in a graceful manner.

I. INTRODUCTION truths about the universe we inhabit. Physics uses a

Physics has always been obsessed with beauty.
Embodying reductionism and objectivism, the field
seeks to invent elegant mathematical frameworks
that predict the position, motion, and evolution of
systems over time on the most fundamental lev-
els. Often thought of as the first science, physics
has helped humanity understand its environment for
thousands of years.
The philosophers of ancient Greece theorized that
celestial bodies were embedded within spheres of
an extraterrestrial aether, and these celestial bodies
were thought of as perfect and unblemished. The
motion of these nested spheres around the Earth ex-
plained the motion of celestial bodies. These the-
ories of the cosmos seemed to be complete based
on the observations of the time, but people realized
that the planets seemed to move backwards in the
sky, showing that reality did not match the simple
model of celestial spheres. Modifications were made
to the model to try to explain this retrograde mo-
tion, positing that the planets orbited fixed points
on the spheres where the planets had been located
in previous models. This explained how the plan-
ets could travel backwards while still seeming to or-
bit Earth. The model of geocentric celestial spheres
became essentially unusable as various observations
continued to disagree with this geocentric model of
the universe. Then a simpler framework was in-
troduced, positing that everything revolved around
the sun, not the Earth. While less anthropocentric,
this model explained the measurements in a simpler
and more elegant way. The usefulness of the theory
increased as well, paving the way for gravitational
models that would replace the celestial spheres en-
tirely.
Physicists were able to determine that the plan-
ets orbit the sun without having access to a refer-
ence point outside the solar system by seeking deeper
combination of simplicity, elegance, and productiv-
ity to define beauty.
II. BACKGROUND
Calculus was invented for physics and represents
rates of change in mathematical frameworks. While
it has an intimidating aura, calculus only introduces
two new major tools: the derivative and the integral.
The derivative takes a function and returns the rate
of change. The integral finds the area underneath
a function. The integral is also an antiderivative,
much like division is anti-multiplication. Applying
these tools to position, velocity, and acceleration are
the basis of classical mechanics, which will be dis-
cussed later. Equation 1 represents how the deriva-
tive of some function f (x) with respect to x is writ-
ten.
df (x)
(1)
dx
Equation 2 represents how the integral of some
function f (x) from x = a to x = b with respect to x
is written.
Z b
f (x)dx (2)
a
A. Framework
Physics goes through cycles of perceived complete-
ness as the field progresses. Albert Einstein is often
attributed to have said that ”as our circle of knowl-
edge expands, so does the circumference of dark-
ness surrounding it. This illustrates the fact that
the more that we know, the more we begin to com-
prehend our lack of knowledge. Progress in physics

is often obstructed until revolutions occur. Exam-
ples include the reorganization of the solar system,
the ultraviolet catastrophe, and the resulting revolu-
tions in quantum mechanics. As a result, the nature
of progress in physics is cyclical, and physics can ap-
pear virtually complete until theories are broken by
observations.
III. RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS
A possible explanation for the cyclical nature of
progress is based upon the definition of beauty in
the context of physics and how it clashes with the
paradigm of the time. In order to investigate this,
beauty is parameterized into three variables: sim-
plicity, elegance, and productivity. [8]
Simplicity is that a theory predicts the correct re-
sults with the smallest amount of unnecessary ac-
commodations. Epicycles are an excellent exam-
ple of an unnecessarily complex theory to explain
the retrograde motion of planets and other celestial
bodies. With three comparatively simple laws, Ke-
pler was able to predict the motion of the planets
with unprecedented accuracy without the epicycles
needed to force geocentrism to work, making Ke-
pler’s laws a much simpler model.
Elegance is evident where unification occurs. For
instance, when Newton developed his universal law
of gravitation, the falling of an apple was explained
by the same equation that predicts the motion of
celestial bodies.
Productivity is how much a theory can predict
and the degree to which it leads to new ideas. Ke-
pler’s laws not only predicted the motion of celestial
bodies more accurately, but inspired Newton to re-
alize that a unified theory of gravity could explain
nearly all types of motion, leading to the develop-
ment of his law of universal gravitation. From epicy-
cles through Kepler’s laws to universal gravitation,
theoretical physics took massive leaps in its ability
to explain new phenomena as well as answer previ-
ously unasked questions.
The advancements in physics that brought us
from epicycles, geocentrism, and celestial spheres
to universal gravitation and Newton’s laws are one
of several revolutions in physics that will be used
to show how simplicity, elegance, and productiv-
ity have evolved. This overview of the history of
physics through the lens of beauty will greatly sim-
plify the progress of physics into a number of defin-
ing moments for the sake of brevity. These will be
split into the stories of the 4 main regimes of mod-
ern physics: classical mechanics, relativistic mechan-
ics, quantum mechanics, and quantum field theory,
which are shown in Figure 1.
2
Figure 1. Fields of Modern Physics [6]
Newton’s additions to the field of physics set a
paradigm that lasted 200 years. Progress during this
time was widespread, comprehensive, and built what
we now call classical physics.
Classical physics provides remarkably good pre-
dictions of medium sized, slow moving objects and
is often split into mechanics, electrodynamics, and
thermodynamics. For the purposes of this analysis,
thermodynamics will be ignored.
A. Classical Mechanics
Classical mechanics describes the motion of
medium sized, slow moving objects. Nearly every
classical mechanics problem can be solved with New-
ton’s second law and kinematics. Although calculus
is needed to use these equations, they explain the
everyday world with remarkable accuracy and in a
simple way. The beginning of classical mechanics is
often attributed to Newton and nearly all of it can be
built upon his second law of motion and kinematics:
d(mv)
F = (3)
dt
Equation 3 simplifies in most cases to Equation 4.
F = ma (4)
F is force, m is mass, v is velocity, t is time, and a
is acceleration. Kinematics is the simple application
of derivatives to motion.
ds
v= (5)
dt
dv d2 s
a= = 2 (6)
dt dt
Where s is position and the rest of the variables
are consistent with the definitions given for Newton’s

second law in Equations 3 and 4. These equations
describe how force, momentum, mass, acceleration,
velocity, and position are related. They elegantly
unify an enormous section of the classical everyday
world into a single framework and are productive
because they predict nearly everything we see in our
everyday lives.
B. Classical Electrodynamics
Electrodynamics details the interaction of elec-
tric charges, magnetism, and light. A summary
of the history of this field will be shown by in-
vestigating the works and discoveries of Charles-
Augustin de Coulomb, Hans Christian Oersted,
Andre-Marie Ampere, Michael Faraday, and James
Clerk Maxwell.
One of the first quantitative models of the force
between electric charges was published by Coulomb
in 1784. It is an inverse square law that is essen-
tially analogous to Newton’s universal gravitation
and shown in Equation 7.
q1 q2
F12 =
4π0 r2
(7)
Equation 7 essentially states that the electrical
force between the two charges q1 and q2 is propor-
tional to the product of the charges and is inversely
proportional to the square of the distance r between
them. This means that the higher the charges, the
larger the force, and the higher the distance, the
lower the force. This is one of the first laws in the
development of classical electrodynamics.
In 1820, Oersted noticed that a magnetic needle
was deflected by a current carrying wire, providing
the first indications that magnetism and electrostat-
ics could be the product of a single underlying force.
He published his results soon after, which inspired
Ampere to conduct further work in the unification of
electromagnetism, leading to the derivation of Am-
pere’s law, which is shown in Equation 8. Ampere’s
law relates the integral of magnetic field in a loop,
enclosed electric current, and the time derivative of
electric flux.
Z
~ · d~l = µ0 I + µ0 0 dΦE
B (8)
dt
Equation 8 shows that the sum of all of the mag-
netic force B along some loop l is equal to some
constant µ0 times the current I enclosed in the loop
l plus more constants times the rate of change of
electric flux. Electric flux is a measure of the flow
of an electric field through an area. This essentially
3
means that a moving charge generates a magnetic
field.
In 1831, Faraday discovered electromagnetic in-
duction, which is how electricity is generated by a
changing magnetic field. Over the course of the fol-
lowing years, he developed Equation 9.
dΦB
E =− (9)
dt
Equation 9 shows that an electromotive force E
can be induced on a wire by a changing magnetic
field related to ΦB . The ΦB is the magnetic flux.
It is the same concept of electric flux, but with a
magnetic field instead of an electric one. Essentially,
a changing magnetic field gives an electric field.
Most of the scientific community rejected Faraday
and his findings as they were discovered purely by
experiment and not through mathematical theory.
There was a notable exception however. Maxwell’s
equations form the underpinning of all of classical
electromagnetism, which are Equations 10 through
13.
Z
~ = qencl
~ · dA
E (10)
0
Z
~ · dA
B ~=0 (11)
Z
~ · d~l = µ0 I + µ0 0 dΦE
B (12)
dt
dΦB
E =− (13)
dt
Equations 12 and 13 should look familiar, as they
are elaborated on above. Equation 10 (Gauss’s law)
can be derived from Coulomb’s law, which is shown
in Equation 7. Coulomb’s law is presented above
instead of Gauss’s law because it is simpler and
more intuitive. Equation 11 has no widely accepted
name, but it states that there cannot be magnetic
monopoles.
One fascinating result of these equations is that
they show that magnetic field is related to the rate of
change of electric flux while electric fields are related
to the rate of change of magnetic flux. Essentially, a
changing electric field generates a magnetic field and
a changing magnetic field generates an electric field.
These equations set the groundwork for electromag-
netic waves, which are self propagating electric fields
generating magnetic fields generating electric fields

etc, which is the the classical definition of light.
It is amazing how unifying electrostatics and mag-
netostatics yields a set of equations describing light,
which is a seemingly unrelated phenomena. This
framework for describing light also predicts that its
speed must be constant. Since physics is frame inde-
pendent (it doesn’t matter what frame of reference
you are in as long as that frame is not accelerating),
light must move at a constant speed in all reference
frames, a topic explored in more detail later in the
paper.
The development of classical electrodynamics is a
wonderful example of the cycles in physics progress
alluded to above with beauty’s parametrization into
simplicity, elegance, and productivity. Electrostat-
ics used to be divided into several different fields of
study. As these fields progressed, numerous equa-
tions were generated to predict various phenomena.
The simplicity of the fields decreased, but produc-
tivity increased as more and more extraneous equa-
tions were generated. Completing a trend of unifica-
tion, Maxwell finished classical electrodynamics with
his 4 revolutionary equations and showed an un-
deniable connection between electromagnetism and
light. This simplified electrodynamics enormously
while increasing productivity even more.
By unifying electrostatics and magnetostatics into
electromagnetism and by developing the laws of
motion and how force yields acceleration, classical
physics was explained by a simple set of elegant and
productive equations.
C. Relativistic Mechanics
After Maxwell’s equations solidified, physics was
thought to be complete with only a few little quirks
to work out. One of these is what was seen as a
minor disagreement in predicted speeds of light be-
tween classical mechanics and classical electromag-
netism.
Classical mechanics predicts a substance called
the luminiferous ether since all classical waves need
a medium through which to transit: sound travels
through air and ripples travel through water. As
such, it was postulated that there must be a medium
through which light travels. This luminiferous ether
was thought to permeate all of space and some mod-
els predicted it as a stationary, almost absolute ref-
erence, meaning that light would have an observed
speed determined by the speed of the observer with
respect to the emitter. The ether implies that one
could measure different speeds of light as their mo-
tion changed.
Maxwell’s equations, predict a constant speed of
light in all reference frames through a simple rela-
4
tionship between the electric constant 0 and the
magnetic constant µ0 . This relationship is shown in
Equation 14.
1
c= √ (14)
0 µ0
Equation 14 implies that light always travels at
some constant velocity c, independent of reference
frame. This is not intuitive, as the following will
illustrate. If someone threw a ball out of a moving
car, the ball’s velocity with respect to an observer
on the ground would be the sum of the car’s velocity
and the velocity of the ball as seen from the thrower.
If the same person turned on a flashlight, however,
the frame of reference is irrelevant and the speed of
light from the flashlight is the same to both the car
and the person on the ground.
This sets classical electromagnetism and classical
mechanics at odds. Numerous teams of physicists
set out to build experiments to find problems in ei-
ther framework that could explain this discrepancy.
One of these was the Michelson Morley experiment.
The Michelson-Morley experiment was conducted in
order to find the difference in the speed of light pre-
dicted by the luminiferous ether. This experiment
used an interferometer, which takes a beam from a
coherent light source, splits the beam into two or-
thogonal legs, reflects these beams back, and recom-
bines them in order to find interference patterns that
can be used to determine the time it takes light to
travel back and forth incredibly accurately. They
found no difference in timing at different times of
year, disproving ether theory. In fact, they found no
difference in the speed of light outside of experimen-
tal error. Maxwell’s equations prevailed.[4]
The implications of a constant speed of light is
the impetus of Einstein’s special relativity. The two
postulates that the entire framework is built upon
are that the laws of physics are the same in any
inertial (non-accelerating) reference frame and that
the speed of light is constant in all reference frames.
This broke a 200 year old paradigm that there must
be one universal time. Because the speed of light
that must stay constant to all observers, the rate
at which time passes in comparison between two
different frames must differ. Einstein’s new frame-
work extended classical mechanics into the realms of
the very fast and eventually the extremely massive
through general relativity. The theories stay simple,
as relativistic mechanics is only mildly more diffi-
cult to work with. This new framework is incred-
ibly elegant, as it unifies classical mechanics with
classical electromagnetism in a sense by giving them
both constant speeds of light. Relativity is also enor-
mously more productive as it predicts the motion of

incredibly fast and heavy objects. Classical physics
is what is called a limiting case of relativistic me-
chanics, as the equations of relativistic mechanics
are the same as the equations for classical mechan-
ics at low speeds with relatively light bodies.
D. Quantum Mechanics
Along with his paper on special relativity, Einstein
also published a paper on the photoelectric effect.
The photoelectric effect is a phenomenon where ir-
radiating a substance with light can eject electrons.
It is the wavelength of the light, not the intensity or
duration that the light is shown, which determines
whether electrons are ejected. This completely dis-
agrees with classical physics since classical physics
does not care how energy is delivered to the electron,
only that it is. In order to predict this result, light
must be split up into discrete particles or quanta
called photons with energy hν, where h is a constant
and ν is the frequency of the light. Quantizing en-
ergy means that it has to be split up into a very large
number of discrete steps as opposed to a continuum
that had been assumed ever since the advent of the
concept of energy. A light particle didn’t make much
sense, as Maxwell’s equations and the past several
hundred years of solid measurement and experiment
showed that light was a wave, not a particle. Light,
somehow, was both at once. Quantum mechanics
was born.
As time progressed and more and more research
was done in the infant field, things only became
stranger. The deterministic qualities of classical
physics faded away into the probabilistic nature of
quantum mechanics, making people very uncomfort-
able. Einstein, once said, ”God doesn’t play dice, re-
ferring to quantum mechanics. Neils Bohr has been
rumored to have replied, ”Einstein, don’t tell God
what to do with his dice.”
Quantum mechanics’ governing equation is the
Schrodinger Wave Equation, which is shown in
Equation 15.
∂Ψ ~2 ∂ 2 Ψ
i~ =− + V (x)Ψ (15)
∂t 2m ∂x2
Equation 15 is a simplified version that only ap-
plies to 1 dimension. Ψ is a function of x and t. This
equation is the equivalent of Newton’s second law for
quantum mechanics. Instead of a simple equality,
the Schrodinger equation is an intimidating second
order differential equation. It is also, as far as we can
tell, correct. This equation governs the entirety of
the quantum world, which is a completely counter-
intuitive place where particles pass through impene-
5
trable barriers, teleport from place to place, and be-
come entangled so that observing one entangled par-
ticle determines the state of its partner. An entire
thesis paper could be done on only the counterintu-
itive nature of the quantum world. The classic adage
”If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand
it” loses its meaning in the quantum world. Richard
Feynman, a Nobel laureate in physics and arguably
the best explainer of the quantum world of all time
once said, ”If you think you understand quantum
mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechan-
ics.” It is much easier to do quantum mechanics than
to understand quantum mechanics.
Everything that can be known about a particle is
contained in its wave function, Ψ. To access this in-
formation, one must solve for Ψ from the equation
above and complete a simple series of mathemati-
cal steps to find anything there is to know. This
yields great productivity and incredible simplicity.
After years of work, the leading physicists of the
20th century unified the various quantum theorems
and formed an elegant, comparatively simple model
in relation to the utterly counterintuitive phenom-
ena it explains.
E. Quantum Field Theory
Particle physics is the study of how fundamen-
tal particles and forces interact on subatomic scales.
The way we study physics is inherently reductionist
and particle physics takes that to its furthest ex-
tent. Ideally, if the smallest building blocks of the
universe and their interactions can be predicted, all
other physical science could be explained as emer-
gent phenomena. The first known examples of this
idea originated in ancient Greece. In fact, the word
atom comes from the Greek atomos, meaning in-
divisible. The first forays into this field showed
that atoms were not indivisible, splitting them into
protons, neutrons, and electrons. Modern particle
physics and the Standard Model describes three cat-
egories of elementary particles: quarks, leptons, and
bosons.
F. Quarks
As the structure of the atom became better de-
fined, it became clear that any atom’s nucleus with
an atomic number greater than one should fly apart
due to electrostatic repulsion. To account for this,
Hideki Yukawa theorized a particle called a meson,
from the Greek µ´ σoς for intermediate, that would
hold the nucleus together and published his the-
ory in 1934. The hunt was on for Yukawa’s me-

son. After numerous candidates were proven to be
other particles, the pi meson was discovered and fit
the theory perfectly. However, there was another
problem. New particles were being discovered ex-
tremely frequently until there was a veritable zoo
of hundreds of particles, hardly the simple and el-
egant subatomic world that physicists had hoped
for. Willis Lamb once said, ”...the finder of a new
particle used to be rewarded by a Nobel prize, but
such a discovery ought to be punished by a $10000
fine.” It only seemed that the deeper we looked,
the messier it became. Physics went from having
a handful of subatomic particles (neutron, proton,
electron) to a completely ungainly mess of them. A
new framework for the organization of these particles
was needed. As such, Murray Gell-Mann developed
the Eightfold Way [1], which is shown in Figure 2.
This same structure can be built into larger struc-
tures to include the huge number of the particles
that were found.
Figure 2. Meson Octet [10]
The particles on the same horizontals share the
same strangeness while the particles on the diago-
nals share the same charge. Particles are placed op-
posite from their antiparticles. The neutral pi me-
son and the eta meson are their own antiparticles.
The octuplet shown in Figure 2 does not have the
hundreds of particles discussed above because it is
a simplified model that only depicts mesons; higher
order structures can be built to include nearly all
of the particles found. The organization of the octet
above implies that there is an underlying mechanism
in the construction of mesons. This is the origin of
quark theory, which theorizes that this new massive
collection of particles are actually composites of a
small number of component particles called quarks.
This enormously simplified theory posits that there
are six different flavors of quarks: up, charm, top,
down, strange, and bottom, that can be put together
in various combinations to yield the mess of parti-
6
cles that had been found. The up, charm, and top
quarks have a charge of 23 while the down, strange,
and bottom quarks have a charge of − 31 . Antiquarks
have inverse charges.
Strangeness is defined in Equation 16.
S = −(ns + n̄s ) (16)
ns is the number of strange quarks and n̄s is the
number of antistrange quarks. With this, we can
build the particles of the Eightfold Way out of com-
ponent quarks, as shown in Figure 3
Figure 3. Meson Octet [2]
Figure 3 shows that quark theory can explain the
Eightfold Way’s organization of these mesons. In
higher order structures, quark theory also holds true.
Quark theory simplified hundreds of mesons and
baryons into 6 quarks and antiquarks, an enormously
simplified model. The advent of quark theory simpli-
fied this realm of particle physics immensely while
increasing productivity by opening doors into the
strong force, one of the fundamental forces. With
the completion of quark theory, one of the three cat-
egories of particles in the Standard Model is com-
plete.
G. Leptons
As the particle zoo expanded, a small number of
particles were found that were decidedly not quarks
or quark composites. This new class of particles,
called leptons, are indivisible-as far as we can tell-
and are not made of component particles. Electrons
are leptons, as are two heavy electrons, called muons
and tau particles. There is a decay process through
which a neutron can decay into a proton and an elec-
tron, which is one of the main ways that radioactive
elements decay. As more precise measurements were
made, it became apparent that this process did not

appear to conserve energy or momentum. In order to
fix these violations of the basic postulates of physics,
Pauli proposed a new light and hard to detect parti-
cle called a neutrino. [3] These particles are classified
as leptons and have a flavor similar to quark flavor.
The leptons were complete.
H. Unification of Quarks and Leptons
As quark theory and lepton theory became com-
plete, it became apparent that the two could be com-
bined into one elegant, unified model. Now called
the Standard Model, this new theoretical framework
is considered to be the most successful model in the
history of physics. Unifying quarks and leptons into
one framework is only one piece of the Standard
Model and the bosons that complete it will be ex-
plained below. One particularly beautiful part of
the Standard Model is the introduction of a kind of
Periodic Table for the fundamental particles, which
is shown in Figure 4. The bosons are omitted and
will be introduced later.
Figure 4. The Standard Model without Bosons [5]
Figure 4 shows that if the particles are organized
into rows by charge and into columns of increasing
mass, some patterns emerge. It shows that there are
3 generations of matter. Generations correlate with
the lepton flavors and the quark flavors discussed
above. These flavors can act as the charge for the
weak force, one of the fundamental forces of nature.
Every matter particle we have yet found can be built
from the particles in this simple table, which makes
it incredibly productive and simple. It is also elegant
7
because of how it puts all of these particles on the
same footing and unifies quark and lepton theories.
I. Bosons and the Standard Model
This section will focus on the force carrying bosons
and ignore the Higgs boson. As of yet, we have
discovered four fundamental forces of the universe:
gravity, electromagnetism, the strong force, and the
weak force. All other known forces are derivatives
of these. The Standard Model provides a framework
on which particles interact via the strong, weak, and
electromagnetic forces. Quantum field theory is the
framework upon which the Standard Model is built,
meaning that all particles and forces are represented
as excitations of their respective fields. For example,
a top quark is an excitation in the top quark field
and an electron is an excitation in the electron field.
Representing particles as field excitations gives us
a new way of representing the fundamental forces:
force carrying bosons.
Bosons are the non fermionic particles. They have
integer spin and can occupy the same space as one
another, unlike fermions. A certain class of bosons
are the fundamental force carrying bosons: the pho-
ton (γ), the weak bosons (W + ,W − , and Z 0 ), and
the gluon (g). These convey the electromagnetic,
weak, and strong forces, respectively. When these
bosons convey force, it is via a virtual particle. This
simply means that the force carrier is emitted and
absorbed with no possibility of observation, making
them impossible to detect directly. These virtual
particles can be seen as just a calculational tool,
but the methods that incorporate them, such as the
Standard Model, predict particle interactions incred-
ibly well. These virtual particles allow us to repre-
sent three of the four fundamental forces as particles,
which is shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5. The Standard Model with Bosons [5]
 8

The Standard Model predicts particle interactions community is worried that the resources devoted to
on quantum scales nearly perfectly. However, It supersymmetry could be put to better use elsewhere.
omits several important observations. It does not While this concern is valid, physics should be able
predict neutrino masses, dark matter, dark energy, to move on from invalid models autonomously. It
matter-antimatter asymmetry, or gravity. On the is my hope that, if supersymmetry is disproven, it
other hand, it does predict particle interactions in- will be replaced with elegant and beautiful models.
credibly well in a region that represents nearly 43 Henri Poincare once said that ”The scientist does
of all matter physics. The Standard Model is ex- not study nature because it is useful; he studies
tremely productive, as it explains nearly all of what nature because it is beautiful. If nature were not
we can see, and is comparatively simple, as it does beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and it
so with a very small number of particles and forces. nature were not worth knowing, life would not be
From a particle zoo of hundreds of particles to just worth living. [7] This sentiment strikes a chord with
17, the Standard Model simplified particle physics many physicists, as the majority of us chose to study
immensely in an elegant fashion while becoming ar- physics because we found the way that it elegantly
guably the most productive model in history. explained the universe fascinating and wanted to see
how it applied to the most fundamental levels of the
cosmos.
IV. CONCLUSION However, the universe may be inherently inele-
gant; the universe works the way it works and does
The advent of particle physics as a whole repre- not care about us. Physics is remarkably good at
sents a turning point in physics away from build- accepting this and moving forward. The model of
ing theories to match current observation to build- epicycles and celestial spheres is elegant and physics
ing theories that predict new observations. There moved past it because it is not correct. It will be
are multitudes of models that can explain various interesting to see whether the concept of beauty hin-
phenomena and certain models are researched be- ders or accelerates the course of physics in the com-
cause they are beautiful. Projects get funding if ing years. It is the hope of the physics community
they investigate theories that postulate beautiful that it pushes us forward, but we are but mere mor-
new physics. The physics community is divided on tals who cannot change how the universe operates,
whether or not this approach is appropriate. [9] only the framework we build to comprehend it.
One group of physicists believes that the universe
should be able to be explained simply and elegantly
while the other group believes that this quest for
beauty could be blinding us from a deeper, less beau-
tiful, but more useful reality. An example of where
this debate comes to a head is supersymmetry. Su-
persymmetry speculates a new class of superpartners
of the existing particles of the Standard Model which
would unify the fermions and the bosons to an even
further extent. A dark matter candidate falls out
of this theory and various pathways towards includ-
ing gravity in the framework exist. In short, it is
the most beautiful way forward we have, which re-
sults in supersymmetry receiving a huge portion of
available funding.
The problem is that we have found no superpart-
ners where we should have. This has left the most
favorable supersymmetric models dead. There are
various workarounds such as long lived particles that
could allow these superpartners to escape detectors
before decaying into detectable particles, but if the-
ories like long lived particles don’t pan out, there
could be little hope for an elegant supersymmetric
model. Every day, supersymmetry looks less and
less likely. However, there are enough parameters in
supersymmetry that, even if it is incorrect, it may
never be completely disproven. Part of the physics
 9

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