The Next Level of Fundamental Matter? A scientific idea may be
elegant. It may also be correct. If you must choose, choose
correct. But it is always better to have both. "Elegant" is in
the eye of the beholder. "Correct" is decided by the ultimate
judge of science: Mother Nature, speaking through the results of
experiments. Unlike the standard TV talent contests, neither
"Elegant" nor "Correct" can be determined by a vote of the
public or by a panel of sneering judges. But the feeling that an
idea is elegant often depends on the question that is being
asked. All of matter consists of six types of quarks and six
types of leptons, with seemingly random unexplained mass values,
spanning more than ten orders of magnitude. No one knows why,
within these twelve building blocks, the same pattern repeats
itself three times. Some of these objects may also convert into
each other, under certain circumstances, by unexplained rates,
called "mixing angles". The twenty odd values of these rates and
masses seem to be arbitr