How are the four fundamental forces similar?

Question

Layla Anderson · Accepted Answer

Symmetries!

Electromagnetic, nuclear weak, nuclear strong, and gravitational are the four forces. Physicists realized between the 1930s and the 1970s that symmetries, which are deeper aspects of nature, are expressed through forces. We refer to this symmetry because the equations are symmetric under the transformation that moves my observation point from the front to the back. If we describe the motion of a particle looking at it from the front or from the back of its motion, the motion will be the same. As of right now, we know that all particles are symmetric under an extremely narrow set of transformations; for instance, all particles are symmetric under the transformations found by Einstein in the Special Theory of Relativity (also known as the Lorentz transformations because Einstein applied them to the dynamics after Lorentz first discovered them). Specifically, two electrons together can almost be symmetric under a special symmetry that we call U(1). They are not perfectly symmetric; something is missing. If you add the missing piece to the equation, you find that the missing part represents another particle that we call a photon. So two electrons and a photon are together symmetric and we call this electromagnetic force. The scientists discovered that some of the symmetries do not belong to a single particle but rather need groups of particles. This was a great discovery because it was the first time that we obtained a force as expression of something purely mathematical. Scientist applied the same idea to the weak force and discovered that the symmetry of that force can be completed with three different particles, #W^+# #W^-# and #Z^0#. More than this, the weak interaction is of the same nature of the electromagnetic force and at high energy the symmetry is the same. This force is now called electromagneticweak force, although it is also referred to as electroweak force in some books. The strong interaction is currently being studied using the same theory, and researchers are making progress in determining which symmetry is producing the force and how it relates to weak and electromagnetic symmetry. We hope to discover one day that there is actually only one of these three forces. Regarding gravity, the debate is entirely different since gravity deals with space and time, and no one knows how to characterize gravity in terms of particles today. This makes it very difficult to apply the symmetry idea to that force, and we don't know if gravity is actually a component of the same force or not. We need to find some previously undiscovered or untested new physics in order to incorporate gravity into the same framework.

Clara Avalos · Answer

undefined The four fundamental forces are similar in that they all involve interactions between particles and objects in the universe. They are mediated by force carriers, which are particles exchanged between objects during interactions. These forces can be attractive or repulsive depending on the circumstances, and they play fundamental roles in shaping the behavior of matter and energy at various scales.