Kanishka NaikThe Standard Model organizes quarks and leptons into three generations of increasing mass. First-generation particles are stable; higher generations decay rapidly and appear only in high-energy environments. The Higgs boson gives mass to quarks and charged leptons.
The Standard Model describes three of the four fundamental forces—electromagnetism, the strong force, and the weak force. It does not incorporate gravity. Despite this limitation, it accurately predicts a broad range of experimental measurements in particle and high-energy physics.
The Standard Model leaves key questions unanswered: it does not explain dark matter, the observed dominance of matter over antimatter, or why exactly three generations of quarks and leptons exist. These open questions motivate ongoing research into physics beyond the Standard Model.