Ask Ethan: Why Are There Only Three Generations Of Particles?
“It is eminently possible that there are more particles out there than the Standard Model, as we know it, presently predicts. In fact, given all the components of the Universe that aren't accounted for in the Standard Model, from dark matter to dark energy to inflation to the origin of the matter-antimatter asymmetry, it's practically unreasonable to conclude that there aren't additional particles.
But if the additional particles fit into the structure of the Standard Model as an additional generation, there are tremendous constraints. They could not have been created in great abundance during the early Universe. None of them can be less massive than 45.6 GeV/c^2. And they could not imprint an observable signature on the cosmic microwave background or in the abundance of the light elements.
Experimental results are the way we learn about the Universe, but the way those results fit into our most successful theoretical frameworks is how we conclude what else does and doesn't exist in our Universe. Unless a future accelerator result surprises us tremendously, three generations is all we get: no more, no less, and nobody knows why.”
There are three generations of (fermionic) particles in the Universe. In addition to the lightest quarks (up and down), the electron and positron, and the electron neutrino and anti-neutrino, there are two extra, heavy “copies” of this structure. The charm-and-strange quarks plus the top-and-bottom quarks fill the remaining generations of quarks, while the muon and muon neutrino and anti-neutrino plus the tau and tau neutrino and anti-neutrino comprise the next generation of leptons.
Theoretically, there’s nothing demanding three and only three generations, but experiments have shown that there are no more to within absurd constraints. Here’s the full story of how we know there are only three generations.
