Comment by gizmo686

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_formulation_of_...

Mathematically it works out that way because the standard model is build up from symmetry groups. The hand wavy explanation is that the symmetries observed in nature wouldn't be reproduced if the charges differed by random irrational numbers.

The same is also generally true of other conserved quantities in the SM. Noether's theorem unifies symmetries and conservation laws as the same thing.

As far as a more fundamental explanation as to WHY the universe is this way, ask your god i guess.

Could be a bit of anthropic principle at play. Universes where things don't work out with some stability might not support chemistry, and biology is especially finicky chemistry.

Because they are mathematical models built to describe a thing and thus their entire purpose as a concept is to add up “neatly”

My layman understanding is that charge is not fundamental. It derives from something called weak hypercharge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weak_hypercharge

Because that is the universe we live in. We don't know where the universal constants come from, if they are random, or selected. Science can't really answer the question of "why", it only does "how".

You're effectively asking why universal constants are the value that they are. Eventually there's no answer other than "it's a property of the universe we live in that we observed."

If you keep asking why eventually you'll reach a ratio between two values: constants and you can't really go further deeper than that. Even if the values we have now end up not being the most fundamental, eventually you'll run into the fundamental ones and still have the same question unanswered.

It’s essentially asking why is the speed of light 299,798,452 m/s or the gravitational constant 6.67x10-11 Nm2/kg2

I’m sure a universe could work with those constants varied but that’s the one we have in our universe.

There could be hypothetical universes with protons being half of electron and atoms would have twice the protons.

However the fundamental constants are just that. A number that allows us to reason about how the universe works.

As to why the number is that, gotta ask your God why they chose that specific value.

Ok probably a dumb take but: doesn’t that “stable forms become more common over time” principle also apply to protons purely by principle of them being in opposition to electrons? Ie the field that coalesces into the quarks we see today because those quarks can ultimately form atoms.

EDIT: after reading the great Wikipedia article above, and a connected one [1], I think I can restate: the only place we can look for these particles is in atoms, so it shouldn’t surprise us that they come in convenient forms to support atom formation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidental_symmetry

when you understand quantum theory correctly, you will realize that particles don't exist by themselves. They are a temporary localization. this means that the number of quarks inside a proton is not actually fixed. when a particle becomes disentangled with the system, that localized it, there's no longer a particle

I mentioned this recently, in the context of the laziness in language, leading to the miseducation of those who don't know better, and was heavily downvoted and ridiculed

keep it up, hn, you'll see idiocracy soon enough and then no one will trigger you

> We could as well say that proton has 3 and electron is -3 charge?

Absolutely! In fact that would have been much more convenient, since the "quantum of charge" appears to be 1/3 of the charge of the proton. All units of charge we've ever observed seem to be integer multiples of 1/3e.

Yes, individual dimensioned quantities are arbitrary: only the relationships between them have physical meaning.

2 up quarks, so 2/3 * 2 -> 4/3. And then 4/3 - 1/3 = 3/3 = 1

How would we ever distinguish what half-a-proton is in a universe where all protons ever are _always_ paired off?

If that were to be the case, we'd have to change the values of the other forces that these charged particles interact with, such as the strong force.

Not that it wouldn't necessarily be possible, but it would require everything we know about physics to be remodeled because the consequences are vast, fundamental even. So yes, with an entirely different model of the universe that would likely be possible.

Sure. Some interesting thoughts in sibling comments too.

Personally, I find the taste of hot chocolate just as nice regardless of the exact mix of quarks composing its constituent elements.

How do they split the bill?