this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2025
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No Stupid Questions

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33
Could there be additional forces at super low energies? Could a new fundamental force be discovered anytime soon? + other questions relating to forces (sopuli.xyz)
submitted 1 week ago by sbeak@sopuli.xyz to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
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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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[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago

Short answer? probably not. particularly when considering the second paragraph.

"the force" is not a fundamental force as described in physics. Speaking as a fan of Star Wars, don't get me wrong, but The Force™ is bullshit handwavium to explain why the BathrobeRaverSquad can do the things they do. you're not going to find some special force literally or proverbially fictitious that will let someone do the things they do.

If there was, we'd see that in the world today.

All of that said, our understanding of the universe and it's nature is imperfect. It's something we improved incrimentally getting better and more accurate models as we progress. it's certainly possible that there is something new to be found, but it's highly unlikely.

[–] Ziggurat@jlai.lu 4 points 1 week ago

That's a lot of questions...

We do have a pretty good understanding of physics, using the standard model we could predict the Higgs Boson, and the muon's abnormal magnetic moment with an incredible precision. While cosmology isn't as precise yet, we're now in the precision cosmology era so new forces don't come out of the hat.

A few new force I may think off

  • Modifed gravity is an alternative theory to dark-matter which would require gravity to behave differently with low acceleration, . While, there is good reasons to think it's not working, it's not yet strictly excluded, so a new force can come from here

  • Inflaton, would be the force associated to the so-called dark-energy which explain the universe expansion. However, the property of the inflaton particle still have to be understood, but that would be a new force

  • Higgs field being a boson, it's a force

  • Supersymmetry is a pretty popular extension to the standard model (as it would solve a lot of problems, and provides theoretical candidate for dark-matter) and it involved a new batch of boson --> New force

[–] solrize@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week 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

[–] Successful_Try543@feddit.org 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week 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.

[–] Krudler@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

While we're at it, is gravity actually a repulsive force?

[–] sbeak@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 week ago

Could it be possible that the absence of mass is what drives gravity? (probably not, but it's cool to think about)

[–] porcoesphino@mander.xyz 1 points 1 week ago

Wow I wish this was two questions. I'm pretty curious to see if there is anything detailed people have to say about the first paragraph but have little energy to skim through the answers to the second paragraph that seem to be dominating word count

[–] IWW4@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 week ago

No