Four Fundamental Forces of the Universe

Source– This post “Four Fundamental Forces of the Universe ” is based on the article “How many forces are there in nature, really? | Explained” published in “The Hindu” on 15th November 2023.

Why in the News?

Recently an assistant professor of theoretical physics at the Centre for High Energy Physics in the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru published an article on that topic.

What is the concept of ‘Force’?

1. Force is an agent that induces an object to change its velocity, according to Newton’s second law.
2. The forces we have encountered in our daily lives  – tension, friction, van der Waals force, weight, etc. – come from just four fundamental types of interactions between elementary particles(subatomic particles).

What are the four fundamental forces of Universe?

1. Gravity– The force that pulls us to the surface of the Earth, keeps the planets in orbit around the Sun and causes the formation of planets, stars and galaxies.

2. Electromagnetic force– Electromagnetism is the force responsible for the way matter generates and responds to electricity and magnetism.

3. Weak force– It is responsible for certain kinds of radioactive decay. For example, the kind of decay measured by archaeologists when they perform radiocarbon dating. It operates only up to distances of 10^-18 m – (ten raised to the power (-18): about one-thousandth the size of a proton).

4. Strong force– It ranges over somewhat longer distances, around 10^-15 m (ten raised to the power (-15)). It keeps the nucleus of an atom bound together, rather than flying apart, and sustains the nuclear fusion that powers the sun.

What is the key concept that defines these interactions of forces in Universe?

Force carrier
1. A force-carrier is any species of particle that mediates the interactions between particles that experience that force, for example- the Higgs boson, discovered in 2012.

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