The Harari–Shupe preon model (also known as rishon model, RM) is the earliest effort to develop a preon model to explain the phenomena appearing in the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics. It was first developed independently by Haim Harari and by Michael A. Shupe and later expanded by Harari and his then-student Nathan Seiberg.
Under certain assumptions, it is possible to show that the model allows exactly for three generations of quarks and leptons.
Evidence
Currently, there is no scientific evidence for the existence of substructure within quarks and leptons, but there is no profound reason why such a substructure may not be revealed at shorter distances. In 2008, Piotr Zenczykowski (Żenczykowski) has derived the RM by starting from a non-relativistic O(6) phase space. Such model is based on fundamental principles and the structure of Clifford algebras, and fully recovers the RM by naturally explaining several obscure and otherwise artificial features of the original model.
In popular culture
- Science fiction author Vonda McIntyre, in her novelizations of the scripts of the movies Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock suggested that the Genesis effect was a result of a newly discovered rishon-like substructure to matter.
- Science fiction author James P. Hogan in his novel Voyage from Yesteryear explicitly postulated a rishon-like model in the development of antimatter weapons and energy sources.