this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2025
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No Stupid Questions

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Since forces can merge into one at very high energies (e.g. electroweak is the unification of electromagnetism and the weak force, GUT is a hypothetical unification of electromagnetism, weak, and strong force), could one of the fundamental forces split into multiple forces at very low energies (like how the electroweak force split into electromagnetism and the weak force as the universe cooled down)? I assume not, since there have been experiments done very close to absolute zero and there aren't any big news about new forces being discovered.

Also, could it be possible that a hidden fifth fundamental force exists in the universe? If it existed, how would we detect it? How many fundamental forces could exist in the universe? Which of the four fundamental forces most closely align with "the Force" from Star Wars? Why is gravity "incompatible" with quantum mechanics? Why were the weak force and strong force so uncreatively named? Why are "W" and "Z" bosons called the way they are? Why not something like "weak boson" and "zero boson", why the letters? Why is the graviton so difficult to detect when we have already found gravitational waves?

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[โ€“] solrize@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Currently known forces splitting at low energies, and hidden 5th force: nobody knows. Physics is an observational science and right now there aren't any observations that suggest such forces, but never say never.

Star wars force: come on, it's fiction.

Gravity incompatible with QM: basically, quantum field theories are developed by starting with classical field theories (say electromagnetism) and doing some mathematical transformations called "canonical quantization" and "second quantization" (these have wikipedia articles). In the 1920s through mid-1940s this worked well for electromagnetism, and made good predictions except it broke down at very small scales, giving "infinity" as the answer to calculations that should have been finite. In the late 1940s a scheme called renormalization was developed, that allowed cancelling out the infinities and getting very precise answers. That was called quantum electrodynamics (QED). Later this was extended to the strong and weak nuclear forces, giving the standard model (SM). That was harder, but same basic idea.

The trouble with gravity is that when you perform quantization and then renormalization, the infinities still don't go away. That's what the incompatibility means. There are a lot of alternate proposals like string theory to quantize gravity, but it's all very speculative for now.

As for detecting gravity waves but not gravitons, it's similar to the situation with visible light. As far back as the 1700s(?) it was possible to combine light beams and see interference patterns, thus confirming the existence of light waves. Light "particles" (photons) are much harder to detect and I think this was first done convincingly by Einstein's explanation of Brownian motion around 1900 (before relativity). Current gravity wave detection works by measuring interference, if I understand correctly.

Disclaimer: I'm no expert and I haven't made any progress in understanding this stuff beyond the handwaving level that you see above.

Added: you might like John Baez's videos about the standard model, https://www.youtube.com/@johncarlosbaez_edinburgh

[โ€“] Successful_Try543@feddit.org 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Current gravity wave detection works by measuring interference, if I understand correctly.

Not the Interference of two gravitational waves though, but the interference of the (initially) coherent light of a split laser beam sent through two orthogonal paths of the same initial length.