To a first approximation this appears to have something to do with the relative weakness of gravity compared to the weak force. This is, I gather, highly unexpected because it involves some delicate cancellations (presumably delicate to about 32 decimal places). And I also gather this is connected with renormalisation, which (if I remember correctly) involves cancelling out infinities that might arise from, for example, point charges (see "Tronnies" for more on this subject :-) by shielding them with virtual particles. The amount of shielding that can be produced depends on which particles are available to virtualise out of the vacuum, so supersymmetry (for example) provides a lot of extra particles which I assume can contribute to a much larger amount of cancellation than would otherwise be possible...
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