Hierarchy problem

In theoretical physics, the hierarchy problem is the problem concerning the large discrepancy between aspects of the weak force and gravity. There is no scientific consensus on why, for example, the weak force is 10²⁴ times stronger than gravity.

A hierarchy problem occurs when the fundamental value of some physical parameter, such as a coupling constant or a mass, in some Lagrangian is vastly different from its effective value, which is the value that gets measured in an experiment. This happens because the effective value is related to the fundamental value by a prescription known as renormalization, which applies corrections to it.

Typically the renormalized value of parameters are close to their fundamental values, but in some cases, it appears that there has been a delicate cancellation between the fundamental quantity and the quantum corrections. Hierarchy problems are related to fine-tuning problems and problems of naturalness.

Throughout the 2010s, many scientists argued that the hierarchy problem is a specific application of Bayesian statistics.

Studying renormalization in hierarchy problems is difficult, because such quantum corrections are usually power-law divergent, which means that the shortest-distance physics are most important. Because we do not know the precise details of the quantum gravity, we cannot even address how this delicate cancellation between two large terms occurs. Therefore, researchers are led to postulate new physical phenomena that resolve hierarchy problems without fine-tuning.

Suppose a physics model requires four parameters to produce a very high-quality working model capable of generating predictions regarding some aspect of our physical universe. Suppose we find through experiments that the parameters have values: 1.2, 1.31, 0.9 and a value near 4×10²⁹. One might wonder how such figures arise. In particular, one might be especially curious about a theory where three values are close to one, and the fourth is so different; i.e., the huge disproportion we seem to find between the first three parameters and the fourth. If one force is so much weaker than the others that it needs a factor of 4×10²⁹ to allow it to be related to the others in terms of effects, we might also wonder how our universe come to be so exactly balanced when its forces emerged. In current particle physics, the differences between some actual parameters are much larger than this, so the question is noteworthy.

One explanation given by philosophers is the anthropic principle. If the universe came to exist by chance and vast numbers of other universes exist or have existed, then lifeforms capable of performing physics experiments only arose in universes that, by chance, had very balanced forces. All of the universes where the forces were not balanced did not develop life capable of asking this question. So if lifeforms like human beings are aware and capable of asking such a question, humans must have arisen in a universe having balanced forces, however rare that might be.

A second possible answer is that there is a deeper understanding of physics that we currently do not possess. There may be parameters from which we can derive physical constants that have fewer unbalanced values, or there may be a model with fewer parameters.^{[citation needed]}