Re: Why is charge quantized?

"Henning Makholm" <henning@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:877j3n9pwy.fsf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Scripsit "tadchem" <tadchem@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Henning Makholm wrote:

Does the Standard Model give a theoretical reason why the quark
charges must be *exactly* +2/3 and -1/3,

The Standard Model is a *model*. It shows us systematically how the
universe really appears to our empirical efforts. It is not a
"theory".

You can call it what you want, but it does come bundled with a
framework of quantum theory, field theory and so forth.

or could one make a model for
a nonbalanced world simply by tweaking the interaction
coefficients?

Sure! The question becomes how well will such a model work?

That is what I ask: Would the model collapse immediately under
internal inconsistencies, or would it take experimental data to refute
it?

Or, for that matter, for our world - could the real proton charge
be
-(1-10^40) electron charges, for example?

Nope. In *our* world one proton is the nucleus of the most abundant
element - hydrogen - and its charge is *observably* neutralized by
exactly one electron.

If it's a simple matter of direct observation, there will always be a
finite precision.

Which observations establish the electrical neutrality of a hydrogen
atom to within 10^-40 of an elementary charge?

None. Yet. Do you think a hydrogen molecule might be more neutral than
a hydrogen atom?

FrediFizzx

Quantum Vacuum Charge papers;
http://www.vacuum-physics.com/QVC/quantum_vacuum_charge.pdf
or postscript
http://www.vacuum-physics.com/QVC/quantum_vacuum_charge.ps
http://www.arxiv.org/abs/physics/0601110
http://www.vacuum-physics.com

.