🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <23651@galaxy.ucr.edu>, baez@ucrmath.ucr.edu (john baez) writes...
>In article <3NOV199212323281@csa2.lbl.gov> sichase@csa2.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE) writes:
>>It is entirely within the realm of possibility that, for example, some
>>future TOE, which unifies EW, Strong, and Gravitational forces will suggest
>>a reason for the value of the speed of light.  As a matter of fact, many 
>>people suspect that an ultimate theory would in fact explain all the 
>>numbers which appear only as parameters in the Standard Model, such as the
>>value of the electronic charge, the various mixing angles, masses, CP-violating
>>phase, etc.  
> 
>Hmm.  I don't buy this, at least not without further explanation.

Fair enough.  Here are a couple of examples from current physics.  In the SM,
the EW mixing angle (a.k.a. the Weinberg angle) is a fundamental parameter.
It must be put in by hand.  But if you derive the SM lagrangian from a 
GUT lagrangian, like SU(5), you find that you *can* derive a value for 
the mixing angle, which falls straight out of the mathematics when you
break SU(5) to SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1).  Probably the best original reason to hold 
out hope for SU(5) GUT was this predication.  Another example is QCD.
The QCD lagrangian is scale-free.  But when you quantize it, you end up
introducing the natural QCD scale of several hundred MeV through the 
regularization process.  Don't ask me for details.  It's complicated, and
I'd have to brush up in some textbooks I haven't opened for a few years.  
Suffice it to say that this is a very nice feature of QCD.  

What other methods there might exist which would allow us to set the
scale for electromagnetism or calculate the particle masses, I cannot
say, of course.  But my claim is not without some historical foundation.

-Scott
--------------------
Scott I. Chase			"It is not a simple life to be a single cell,
SICHASE@CSA2.LBL.GOV		 although I have no right to say so, having
				 been a single cell so long ago myself that I 
				 have no memory at all of that stage of my 
				 life." - Lewis Thomas