| “The Standard Model has exactly 61 fundamental particles.” | There is no unique canonical counting once color, antiparticles, gauge states and neutrino conventions are separated. |
| “Particle generations mean discovery order.” | Generations are repeated gauge-charge families, not chronological groups. |
| “All bosons transmit forces.” | Gauge bosons mediate gauge interactions; the Higgs is a scalar boson but not a gauge force carrier. |
| “The Higgs field gives particles energy, which turns into mass.” | The Higgs VEV generates mass terms through gauge and Yukawa couplings; it is not an energy reservoir. |
| “VEV = 0 means the field has zero vacuum energy.” | Field expectation value and vacuum energy are distinct quantities. |
| “99% of the proton mass is simply gluon binding energy.” | Most nucleon mass is emergent QCD energy, but rigorous decompositions are operator-, scale-, and scheme-dependent. |
| “Chiral symmetry breaking is the cause of confinement.” | They are distinct nonperturbative phenomena, though related in QCD dynamics. |
| “A quark-antiquark meson cannot annihilate because of chirality.” | Quark-antiquark states can annihilate/decay when quantum numbers permit. |
| “Deconfinement needs GUT energies.” | QCD crossover occurs near at small baryon chemical potential. |
| “A QGP makes the strong force long-ranged like electromagnetism.” | Deconfinement does not turn QCD into an Abelian long-range force. |
| “Superconductivity works because photons gain mass and cannot radiate.” | BCS condensation and electromagnetic screening explain zero resistance and Meissner response; effective photon mass language applies to the in-medium gauge response. |
| “A photon is the smallest possible energy.” | has no universal nonzero lower bound. |
| “Every massive elementary particle must decay.” | The electron is massive and experimentally stable. |
| “Light has relativistic mass.” | Modern usage keeps invariant mass and describes photon energy and momentum separately. |
| “From the photon’s viewpoint no time passes.” | Null worldlines have zero proper-time interval, but no photon rest frame exists. |
| “The Big Bang says the universe came from absolute nothing.” | Hot-Big-Bang cosmology describes early hot dense evolution; it does not establish metaphysical creation from nothing. |