*Brain explodes*

*Brain explodes*

No shit. This faggot only has a bachelor's in engineering. Probably with a 2.0 to top it off.

>believing in the standard model of the atom

lmao @ your life

Not a bad question, though the dude in OP's image doesn't do a good job of answering it.

Essentially, it's due to a combination of the uncertainty principle and the exclusion principle/exchange interaction. The former can be derived in a couple of ways (they're on Wikipedia, you can look them up), while the latter follows from the antisymmetry requirement, which is one of the postulates of quantum mechanics (it takes a bit more work and understanding to derive this one, but there are plenty of resources that do it, check out Townsend's textbook for one).

>the dude in OP's image doesn't do a good job of answering it
No shit he doesn't, read more carefully, that "dude" was Bill Nye the Science Guy, and the fact he did such a horrible job answering it* is the entire point of that picture.
*"If things were any other way, things would be different."

Yeah, I see. As a science educator, he really ought to be able to explain basic things about quantum mechanics, the theory is really old and well-understood by now. Anyone with some knowledge of linear algebra should be able to understand it fairly well.

Well, except you want to get into more fundamental models of the universe, it's literally just the nature of atomic interactions. Discrete energy levels is something that was found experimentally so we developed QM to fit that experimental data. There is no "reason" behind it as it's just a consequence of the postulates of QM. It's like asking newton why do masses attract with forces proportional to bla bla bla, he would tell you god or something (because other attraction laws can't have stable orbits).

The model might be and is likely wrong. It's just a convenient hypothetical people tend not to question as it would invalidate much of our current beliefs. Just like how people believe in gravity despite gravitons being a hypothetical, and for it to be mathematically impossible for some observed objects, such as our own milky way, to hold themselves together according to known laws of gravity.

In this sense, much of modern physics is no different than believing in flat earth. It's a bunch of convenient hypotheticals brought together to make sure our current model doesn't break. Might as well start believing that lunar eclipses are cast by shadow objects in the sky instead of our Earth or believing in the Phantom Time Hypothesis for what it's worth.

That's why we have a lot of people analyzing data and using different techniques to make a pretty good guess of what is happening or what it's going to happen. If you want absolute, irrefutable truth, then science isn't for you my dear redditor.

>quantum mechanics
>magic numbers and invented aether everywhere
>really old and well-understood by now