Does thermodynamics not suffice for (2)? Or does that just restate the question, somehow?
I learned many things about the SM from this presentation I had never before retained.
Wondering now to what degree string theory seems to exactly require all of this, vs. merely be apparently compatible with it, insofar as it can be "solved" at all. Where it is too hard, maybe it is not known whether certain SM features are compatible, and everyone just hopes?
By thermodynamics: energy is conserved globally so when a protein molecule relaxes to a minimum energy configuration the energy gets transferred from the protein molecule to its environment. Total energy stays the same but it is more spread out. There are dramatically more possible ways the energy could be spread out than be bunched together: so if it starts out in a bunched out state it will spread out unless there is something, usually a "conserved quantity" or quantum number that makes it impossible for the state to roam randomly across the phase space.
I learned many things about the SM from this presentation I had never before retained.
Wondering now to what degree string theory seems to exactly require all of this, vs. merely be apparently compatible with it, insofar as it can be "solved" at all. Where it is too hard, maybe it is not known whether certain SM features are compatible, and everyone just hopes?