# Why is the standard model wrong?

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It is a common lore that the standard model cannot be correct (even when neutrino masses are taken into account). The following arguments are given:

1. The standard model predicts the wrong vacuum energy (much higher than the observed value, even including the cosmological constant)
2. The standard model does not explain of dark matter
3. The standard model contains Landau poles
4. The standard model does not explain - maybe contradicts - the observed matter/antimatter asymmetry
5. The standard model - QFT - has infinities
6. The top mass and the Higgs mass could potentially make the standard model unstable / unrenormalizable / wrong

Which other arguments do exist? It would also be great to have a reference to one or several lists. I will add the answers to this question as they come up.

There are also various arguments that the standard model is not complete; this is obvious, as

7. The standard model does not explain its 25 or so fundamental parameters.
8. The standard model does not contain gravity.

These two points however, do not make the standard model wrong, as they do not contradict it; they just make it incomplete. Indeed, the question is: Why exactly can't the standard model be correct? And: Are the points 1 to 6 valid?

edited Apr 4

I am not a big fan of SM (mostly because it is overhyped), but your "contras" are not really relevant here.

1) Cosmological constant is not the QFT subject, although some dare think the opposite and apply QFT to the whole Universe.

2) Dark matter is just a vague hypothesis rather than something observable quantitatively in our labs. So QFT is not responsible for not describing our vague ideas.

3) Landau pole is a feature of renormalization procedure and may simply contain errors of calculations (summation of the most divergent terms instead of summation of all terms).

4) Matter/antimatter asymmetry, roughly speaking, is imposed with the "boundary conditions" (experiment) rather than with the differential equations. Thus, there is no contradiction with the experiment.

5) Neutrino masses were never measured directly, but figured out in the frame of some theoretical model. Thus this thing is a model-dependent feature.

6) Gravity is a very weak force acting between very macroscopic bodies. These bodies include already so many other quanta that gravity quanta, if any, cannot override them. Quantization of gravity is thus senseless; it is like quantization of planet orbits. Gravity is not a QFT, that is why its quantization fails miserably.

My personal blame of SM consists of presence of too many fitting parameters and absence of a finite theory. As I mentioned, renormalizations may lead to errors in the final finite results.

The only reason is that we know gravity exists, and it is not accounted for in the standard model.

all your points except for 8 are soft arguments without any strength.

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